


Welcome to the Hellmouth! Part Deux

by OffYourBird



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Multi, Post-Series, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05, Season/Series 06, Season/Series 07, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-11 02:54:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11705313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OffYourBird/pseuds/OffYourBird
Summary: It's been 20 years since the Hellmouth closed, and Buffy has realized that awakening the Potentials has had a vicious side effect. Or rather, several. Left with the choice to either lead or follow as the current present gets erased, Buffy risks everything to go back to the Hellmouth... and back to the one being she thought she'd never see again. A response to the EF 20th Anniversary challenge by javajunkie247.





	1. The Present Is Made to Be Broken

“You’ve really screwed the pooch, you know.”

Buffy looked up from her entirely too-empty glass and laughed darkly. “Cordelia. Long time no see. The Powers here to meddle again?” She paused and threw back the dregs of her drink, ice cubes rattling against the glass, barely given a chance to melt. The last drops of whisky burned all the way down her throat, like comforting fire, like an old friend. “I’m not interested.”

Cordelia managed to look both insulted and annoyed at that. “Meddling is for amateurs. If the Powers wanted to do something  _that_ incredibly boring, there are a million other agents.  _So_  not worth my time.”

That, at least, Buffy knew to be perfectly true. Even dead, there was no power anywhere that could make Cordelia do anything she didn’t want to do. And for that reason only – for the grudging, lingering respect she still had left for the headstrong woman – Buffy didn’t get up and leave immediately. Instead, she poured herself another drink. Well, ‘drink’ was being generous, as it was really just whisky and ice.

“So you’re here why then?”

Cordelia raised a brow as the Slayer threw back her glass again. “Wow, Buffy. Alcoholic much these days?”

“Cordy, in another minute, I’m getting up and leaving. And going somewhere you aren’t.”

Cordelia rolled her eyes, glancing around the tiny apartment kitchen where Buffy sat, stiffly, at the chipped Formica table. Buffy knew exactly what she saw. Empty shelves. Empty cupboards. Empty. Empty. Empty.

“You could use some serious decorating help.”

Buffy barked a laugh. “Is that it? The PTB decided their fucked over Slayer needed a decorating intervention?”

Cordelia was unperturbed, which was strangely pleasant. Everyone else in her life had gotten tired of her acridity in the last few years, and they were never around for very long. Buffy paused. Actually, did they really even qualify as ‘in her life’ anymore?

“That will have to wait. Unfortunately.” Cordelia sighed. “Look, that stupid trick you pulled back in 2003 – waking up all the Slayers?”

Buffy knew her face screamed condescension. “Because I’m so in danger of forgetting.”

Cordelia shrugged. “Well, you shouldn’t. It was the dumbest thing you could have possibly done.”

Buffy poured herself another drink. “Cheers to that, Cordy. Glad we agree.” Buffy laughed into her whisky. “He was right. Magic always comes at a price. Just never expected it to be the fact that I wouldn’t fucking die.”

And what a mind fuck  _that_  had been the first time, when her throat had been ripped out by the nest of vampires that turned out to be more like a hoarde. She’d lain there in agony, drained, for hours – somehow alive even though there was no real way she should still  _be_  anything at all – waiting as her body slowly knit itself back together. She killed the rest of the vamps after that, and then went and got drunk for a week. She should have suspected something immediately, really, when the Turok-Han’s seemingly mortal wound in the Hellmouth hadn’t turned out to be mortal at all. Hadn’t even been bleeding, by the time she got to the bus.

All the Potentials got Slayer power out of the deal. She got whatever the double of that was: near imperviousness, apparently.

There were years when she was tempted to let something take her head all the way off, just to see if that would finally be the end. Sometimes she was tempted to ask Faith if she’d tried that tactic yet. But they never talked about their many not-deaths together. Well, they never talked at all anymore. That was mostly her fault, Buffy knew. What do you say to the sister Slayer you inadvertently screwed over just as badly as you did yourself?

And still, in 20 years, she hadn’t tried intentionally getting beheaded. It was only because of  _him_. Only because he’d sacrificed everything to save them. To save her.

… And then he'd come back without telling her, only to die again, in less than a handful of years.

She was angry the first five years after that – obliteratingly, maelstromically furious. She was a disaster the next five. After that… she was just empty.

Now she just waited for the Big Bad that was Bad enough to test out her theory for her, so she didn’t have to have him disappointed in her for wasting what he’d given. The fucking bastard. He’d left her only a brief message in the end, right before, in far too little time for her to do anything else but sob. It was a move worthy of Angelus, and she would have congratulated her brooding ex for inspiring it, and for not telling her about  _him_  (right before staking him, or seriously considering it) if he hadn’t gone too, in the same breath. Both gone. But not her.

_Buffy… I– Christ, I can’t believe I’m calling. It’s looking bad, pet. Don’t think there’s going to be an after. And no sodding amulet to crawl back out of this time… Dunno what to say to you, what you might even want to hear. Might’ve even stopped listening to this by now…. Fuck. Anyway. Never stopped loving you. And… sod it all to hell, but I just had to say it again… Right. Well. Bye, luv._

“Earth to Buffy.” Cordelia’s bored voice crashed over her, startling her back to the present. Well, that was unfortunate. Even though the past wasn’t really any better. “Look,” Cordelia continued. “It’s either you or someone else, and frankly, you’ve kind of been the hero, so you get first dibs, you know?”

Buffy frowned at her. “Actually, I have less than zero idea what you’re talking about.”

“We’re undoing this whole craptastic shebang. Well,” Cordelia paused, looking smug, “ _I’m_  doing all the hard work, they’re just pushing buttons.”

“Again with the zero idea, Cordy.” Buffy wanted to be tired of this conversation, to crawl back into bed until nightfall, when she could go looking for Bad. But there was something about this conversation that had snagged her.  _Undoing._

Cordelia sighed, seemingly resigning herself to having to actually explain something. “When Miss I’m-too-powerful-for-my-own-good drew out the power from the scythe, she not only fractured your line, she fractured magic in general. The winds are starting to rattle against the doors, Buffy, and the guys upstairs aren’t so happy about it.”

“I feel for them, really.”

“No need to make with the major bitchiness."

“I thought you were all in support of the bitchiness, Cordy.”

Cordelia shrugged. “Only when it’s me.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “Anyway, you can’t be so entirely out of it that you haven’t noticed.”

Despite herself, Buffy nodded. There was no denying that things had gotten… weird in the past two decades. Like ‘there is a time sucking vortex next door and my friend randomly turned into a chimpanzee’ weird. Things were breaking.

“Right. So the big guys have decided to go back and stop your little Slayer breeding project.” She took a purposeful breath. “And it’s happening by you or to you.”

A chill ran through Buffy, potentially the first inkling of fear she’d had in a decade. The last time she’d felt fear was when she realized she no longer remembered the exact shade of blue of  _his_  eyes. ‘Wait,” she demanded hoarsely. “You’re going to erase the present?”

“That’s what I just said. Keep up.”

“How.”

Cordelia shrugged. “We’re sending someone back.” She rolled her eyes. “Has to be a Sunnydale loser, for it to make any real difference. And you’re kind of ground zero. If you say no, we’ll move on to the next hopelessly fashion-slow one of you.”

“Who’s after me?”

“Willow.”

Buffy felt like her breath might have been stolen from her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Anger welled in her, luggish and black. Buffy thought that her resentment for her once-friend might’ve abated over the last two decades, but no such luck, it appeared. “The one of us who has almost ended the world, who’s really responsible for all of this, and you’d send  _her_  back?”

Cordelia gave her a superior look. “I told you, you’re the first choice.”

Buffy just stared at her, and neither woman spoke for a long moment. Buffy’s head was spinning. She could go back. She could undo the absolute pit of a burning trash barrel that her life had become. And then another thought struck her, and she thought she might keel over.  _Him._ “Can I… will I be able to change whatever I want?”

Cordelia smiled smugly.

_Yeah, yeah, I know, I’ve just as good as volunteered. Get it over with._

“Whatever you want,” she agreed. There was a pointed pause and Buffy sighed.

“But?”

“But, like I already said, magic is way out of wack right now. Not even the PTB can pull their usual back-in-time crap.”

Buffy blinked.  _Usual?_

“So,” Cordelia continued, “we’re working around it. The Powers can manage seven jumps. That’s seven only, Miss I’m-used-to-getting-my-own-way-because-I’m-a-Slayer. From opening your eyes in the morning to closing your eyes at night – that’s a jump.” She frowned. “Dreaming is all sorts of screwed up right now, so don’t fall asleep during the middle of the day. Something weird might happen to you.”

Buffy mulled that over. “So, seven trips to the past. Okay. Any days I want?”

Cordelia sighed. “Apparently this kind of stunt makes the time stream really unstable. Seriously, this stuff is kind of obnoxiously temperamental and–“

“Cordelia! Get to the point.”

“Sheesh.” Cordelia huffed. “Rude much? Anyway, you need to allow at least several months between jumps, preferably closer to a year. Since you get seven jumps, that would mean your first jump would have to take place in 1996 or 1997.”

“Sophomore year of high school.”

Cordelia gave her a look of forced cheer, raising and shaking her hands as if she was holding pom poms. “Yay, Sunnyhell High… ugh.”

Her first year on the Hellmouth. Buffy felt something bright and stinging rise in her, sharp like a burning blade. For a long moment, she didn’t even recognize what it was. Then,  _oh_. It was hope. And god, wasn’t that dangerous.

“I’ll do it.”

Cordelia smiled with warm approval, looking incredibly pleased with herself. “Great.” She paused and wrinkled her nose at Buffy. “Okay, seriously, go take a shower. You’re a disaster. I am so not spending the next two hours sitting next to a rat-nested Slayer.”

“Two hours?”

Cordelia sighed. “I have to cover all sorts of stupid details with you.” She rolled her eyes. “Minor details.”

Buffy gave her a look, Slayer hard. “Minor? Like minor how?”

“Well, there’s the whole ‘can’t actually send your body back’ thing.”

Buffy shrugged. “Not surprising. Just my consciousness, then?”

“Mhm.”

A thought struck her then. “So what happens to the other Buffy? The actual sophomore in high school?”

Cordy shrugged. “Oh, she’ll still be there. I mean, someone has to be in your body for all the days you’re not. It’s not like we’re just kicking her out.”

Buffy stared at her. “Wait, so other me’s just going to think she’s gone insane?”

Cordelia gave her a patronizing look. “Of course not. We’re not stupid. You’ll just be there, in the back of your younger, much better smelling self’s head. Kind of like a conscience.”

And suddenly the past seemed far less exciting. Buffy poured herself another drink. “So, I’ll be what? Relegated to watching my other self make stupid decisions and hoping she hears the little voice in the back of her head that tells her she’s wrecking it all?”

That earned her a full-on eye roll. “It’s not that bad.” Cordelia pursed her lips. “Seriously, go shower, for the love of concealer that you desperately need to wear.”

Buffy rose with a sigh. “Fine. But when I get back, we’re going over this again.”

“Duh. That’s kind of why I’m here.”

Buffy forced herself to leave the higher being in the kitchen and stumbled into her shower. As she lathered up her hair, she found herself unable to think of anything except Cordelia’s words.  _Whatever you want._

_God damnit, I want_ him _. I want him. I want him._  The words became a ceaseless litany, burrowing through all the layers of her shredded and hardened heart. Became some kind of terrifying balm for her broken soul. Became a swell in her muscles and deep within her, where she had once been able to feel scorching heat.  _I want him._


	2. Day 1: Don’t Die

Cordelia gave her a week to get ready, to pick her days.

“It’s like those nights at The Bronze that sucked,” she said. “You know, the ones when they couldn’t get even the lamest band to play, so they plugged in someone’s mix tape? There weren’t any song requests. It just played through.” She paused. “And was like  _definitel_ y not worth dancing to.”

“Great, Cordy. You just compared my time travel to a shitty mix tape. This sounds more fun every minute.”

The woman had shrugged carelessly. “Hey, it’s going to be your mix tape, so the level of lameness is totally on you. But you don’t get to trade it in. Months will pass in the past, settling between your jumps and whatever things you’ve changed so that the fabric of time doesn’t completely unravel, but for you…” She gave Buffy a somewhat amused look. “It’s going to be a really freaking long seven days.”

“So I’ll just fall asleep and wake up again in the next future day?”

“Pretty much.”

“And if I’ve changed the past to the point that the next day is completely different?”

“Sucks to be you. Or not. I guess it depends.”

“Right.” Buffy resisted the urge to pour herself another glass of whisky. “And where am I in this whole scenario? The me from now, I mean.”

“So you’re in the middle of the dance floor, right? The music is playing – we’re going to pretend that it’s actually not some lame-o night – and you can kind of hear your friends over the song, but not really? You’re the friends.”

“Wow. Gotta tell you, Cordy, this is an A+ pep talk.”

Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Just shout, okay? I know you don’t have my fantastic lungs, but you’re no Willow.”

“Shout?”

“Shout,” Cordelia confirmed.

 

***

 

It was an easy choice, to come back to this day. In the future that had fractured so terribly and completely, this was the first breaking point – well, the first major one. There had been a million others, if you wanted to get nitpicky. It seemed, really, that life was always on the verge of breaking on the Hellmouth, a moment away from crushing them into broken windshield glass. But this day, this was the first time it had really happened – that the world had really become a car crash, whiplashing herself, her friends, and her Watcher in a way that they never really recovered from. Not really.

This was the day she died.

The funny part was, waking up on this day didn’t feel very different from all the other days in the last two decades. Tear tracks were dried on her cheeks, making the skin feel tight and cold; her eyelids felt heavy and swollen; her head was thick and blurred, the telltale signal of her impending hangover. Only, when Buffy tried to open her eyes, she couldn’t. When she tried to move her arms, or her legs, or her shoulders, she couldn’t. She experienced a half moment of mixed panic and resignation at that – it was eerily reminiscent of her many not-deaths, where her body was too damaged to move for some unknown amount of time. But then she realized there was no pain, no burning in her neck, no blinding, coursing weakness from torn and disabled muscles. Everything was quiet. But before Buffy could adjust to much more than that, her younger self’s presence was suddenly there, changing the space entirely, as if someone walked into a dark room and switched on all the lights. Her younger self was waking up.

Buffy held her (metaphorical) breath for a long moment, both halfway hoping and fearing her younger self would catch on to the older version hitchhiking in her mind, but she seemed none the wiser. Buffy mentally rolled her eyes. Who was she kidding. This was the version of herself that hadn’t even known Angel was a vampire until he fanged out mid-kiss. Good god, she had the supernatural senses of a toddler right now.

Cordelia had told her the connection was a little bit like standing in an open doorway and looking through – you could see and hear and smell what was happening, but you didn’t have much control over what went on in the room. It was one of the higher being’s many absurd metaphors that night (“Cordy, do you spend all of your free time coming up with analogies? Because, seriously, they should give you more work.” “Oh, bite me, Buffy.” “Sorry, not my wheelhouse. Go find a vampire.”), but it wasn’t far from the truth. Buffy  _felt_  like she was in her body. Sort of. She could hear the breath in her lungs, could feel the sheets tangled around her body, could smell the beginnings of breakfast downstairs – and yet… there was a thin pane of clear glass between her and it all, like an actually effective version of those museum signs that warned  _Don’t Touch_. Even weirder, she could feel her younger self’s thoughts and emotions. They were a bit fuzzy and muted, but definitely there. And young!Buffy was incredibly disappointed that she had woken up.  _I know how that goes._

Young!Buffy moved her (their?  _Does it count as plural if we’re both me?_  God, that was going to be confusing) body to the edge of the bed and slid off, slogging to the bathroom with utter defeat. There was nothing interesting about the motion to young!Buffy, but older Buffy was almost entranced.  _Wow, was my room always this small?... Did I really draw hearts on every single piece of paper? … Mr. Gordo!... Oh, hell, that closet is terrible…_

It was all the little details that shocked her, all the bits and pieces of a place that had been gone long before Sunnydale itself, lost along with her innocence and her life and her love.  _I’m so young._

And then her younger self’s thoughts rose loud and clear, startling Buffy into mentally jerking back.  _I’m too young to die._  And then her younger self said them again, out loud to the bathroom mirror.

“I’m too young to die.”

Buffy examined her young self’s face thoughtfully. It was unusually rounded, even though she had never been anything that could remotely be called fat. But she was still soft, years and years away from being her immortal Slayer self, who was all sharp edges and coiled muscle.

And… had her younger self caught her older self’s thoughts? Young!Buffy’s thoughts were so concentrated on the idea – on the memory of Giles and Angel discussing the prophecy and her written death – that it was impossible to tell.

 _You’re not going to die_ , Buffy told herself steadily.  _That’s why I’m here._

There was no reply to that, and Buffy mentally sighed. It couldn’t be that easy, apparently.

Still, Buffy figured the morning was a good time to practice – to see how much her younger self could hear her.  _And I swear to god, Cordy, if it’s not at all, I am going to kick your dead ass._

It didn’t, fortunately, seem that bad. Just almost. Inevitably, her younger self listened to all the things that didn’t really matter in the course of the timeline ( _be nice to mom; ugh, totally don’t wear that awful choker; please, for the love of dead demons, change the radio station_ ) and ignored everything that was. Young!Buffy still ended up in her white Spring Fling dress, still ended up heading to Willow’s house to comfort her traumatized friend, still shifted to accepting the fate she thought was before her.

“I'm not okay,” Willow said in a small voice, clutching her knees to her chest, as Buffy sat on the edge of the girl’s bed. The redhead was the picture of sweet innocence, aghast still that evil could creep into the everyday, that it might take her daylight world and turn it inside out, as it had done yesterday with the slaughter of their classmates.  _Oh, Willow… I’ve missed this version of you_.

“I knew those guys,” Willow continued tearily. “I go to that room every day. And when I walked in there, it... it wasn't our world anymore. They made it theirs. And they had  _fun_ …” Her voice broke then, and tears slid down her face. She looked up at Buffy with young, imploring artlessness. “What are we gonna do?”

And there it was. That was moment her younger self felt the fall of dark destiny on her shoulders.  _Well, looks like I’m going to be all prophecy girl_ , young!Buffy thought with some kind of black humor. Out loud, she said. “What we have to.”

Older Buffy pounded on the glass between their minds, fuming.  _No, you stupid girl, what you need to do is stay away!_

Young!Buffy gave no indication that she heard her at all.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

Unburdened by the older Buffy’s thoughts, young!Buffy rose from Willow’s bed and headed to the door, pausing only once to turn to her rattled friend. “Promise me you'll stay in tonight, okay?”

 _You should be the one staying in, you idiot!_  Buffy railed at herself. One of  _his_  favorite phrases ran through her mind then, making her ache horribly.  _You’re a bloody stupid bint_ , she told herself in a whisper.

“I tried to reach Xander,” Willow said, with something that almost seemed like guilt, “but he's not picking up. I'll go by his house tomorrow. We'll get together and figure out what to do.”

“Tomorrow,” young!Buffy repeated, as if it was a foreign word. Internally, her thoughts were running on with a resigned,  _There is no tomorrow. Not for me._

Older Buffy mentally rolled her eyes. God, she had been so melodramatic about dying the first time.  _You only died for a minute this time. Talk to me when you’re dead for 147 days._ She sighed.  _Of course, if that happens, then we’re just fucked all over again._

Young!Buffy headed for the door, pausing only as Willow called her name. “I like your dress,” her once-friend said, with as much enthusiasm and care as she could muster, obviously trying.

 _I love you, too_ , Buffy thought sadly _. Or rather, I did._

“Take care,” young!Buffy said instead.

 

***

 _I’m in hell_ , Buffy decided.  _And I am going to murder Cordelia._

She hadn’t been able to change a single important thing. Young!Buffy had still knocked out her Watcher ( _I swear, all these concussions are probably the reason Giles turned insane and tried to killed_ him – or, at least, it helped to think so).

And now her younger self was in the cemetery, crossbow in hand, the child vampire reaching up to take her hand.

 _Don’t you dare_ , Buffy hissed.

For once, her younger self listened. Of course she did. In the end, whether or not she held the Anointed One’s hand was entirely irrelevant.

 _I’m so glad Spike burns you to a crisp_ , Buffy thought viciously at the child vampire, her heart (metaphorically?) stuttering as she inadvertently thought  _his_  name.

Her younger self stumbled suddenly against the older Buffy’s tide of regret and pain, an odd confusion filtering through her.

 _And you only caught the echoes_ , Buffy thought with a bitter laugh.  _You poor innocent thing. You have no idea of the suffering to come. Of the suffering you cause._  She paused, every bit of her existence wrapped in regret.  _Of the love you lose._

Young!Buffy (of course) seemed not to hear. She was reconciling the emotion in her own way, taking it as regret that her life was about to end.

_Nope. Guess again. That would have been a relief. If it had been permanent, that is. I seem to suck at the whole permanence part._

By the time they reached the caved-in church, Buffy must’ve shouted it a million times _: If you don’t go, he can’t go!_  To no avail. Her stupid, idiotic sixteen-year-old self was so frantic with fear and resignation that she wasn’t even listening to herself, never mind herself from almost thirty years in the future.

And then the Master was there in all his bat-faced glory, looking immensely pleased with himself, like a preening cat.

“Welcome.”

“Thanks for having me.” Young!Buffy glanced around, her younger self taking in the crumbling walls, the massive pool of water nearby. “You really ought to talk to your contractor. I think you've got some water damage.”

The Master gave her a bored look. “Ah, good. The feeble banter portion of the fight. Darling, why don't we just cut to the–”

His words cut off as Buffy fired an arrow to his chest, right over his heart. As older Buffy expected, he caught it before it could even penetrate the skin.

 _Oh, god, it’s really going to happen again_ , older Buffy thought with resigned horror, even as young!Buffy reloaded the crossbow.  _It won’t help._

“You're not going to kill me with that thing.”

 _I wish I could call you over-confident, you hideous reptile_ , Buffy thought bitterly. Cordelia had warned her not to fall asleep; she had the very bad feeling that dying would be worse.  _Great, not even a single day in and I’ve managed to screw it all up irreparably._

Still clinging to some vestige of hope, young!Buffy replied with a fierce, “Don’t be so sure.”

_Oh, he isn’t. But I am._

The Master laughed. “You still don't understand your part in all this, do you? You're not the hunter. You're the lamb.”

Young!Buffy rolled her eyes at that, gaze narrowing as the Master faded from sight. “For somebody all-powerful, you sure do like to hide.”

Young!Buffy turned, and suddenly she was facing a pool of cloudy green water.

_Oh, fuck._

The Master’s voice came from behind her, low and seductive and utterly enthralling. Buffy knew with sudden certainty that she could no longer move, even if her younger self hadn’t realized it yet.

“I'm waiting for you,” the Master almost purred.  _Your voice isn’t nearly as nice as his_ , Buffy thought blackly. Oh, god, but if it had been  _his_  fangs at her throat, she wouldn’t have minded at all.  _If that was all I ever got of you again, Spike, I’d take it_.  _God, don’t let me die without at least that._  Her heart clenched then, as she felt young!Buffy succumb entirely to the Master’s thrall. _Am I really going to go yet again without the relief of your face?_

“I want this moment to last,” the Master murmured.

_I don’t._

“I don't.”

Then the Master’s arms were around her from behind, knocking her crossbow to the ground.

“I understand.” A pause. “You tried. It was noble of you. You heard the prophecy that I was going to break free and you came to stop me. But prophecies are tricky creatures. They don't tell you everything.” His voice whispered intimately in her ear, like prophecy, like doom. Like failure, like ash. “You're the one that frees me. If you hadn't come, I couldn't go. Think about that.”

 _I have been all day_ , Buffy thought bitterly, as her younger self reflected an absurd level of shock.

It was only as the Master’s fangs brushed her neck that Buffy realized that – while her sixteen year-old-self’s mind was firmly in his grasp – _she_  wasn’t.

Her hands twitched.

 _Oh, it is_ so _showtime, you bat-faced freak._

As his fangs slid down, Buffy whirled from his grasp, to the vampire’s incredible shock.

The Master blinked at her. “You’re… you’re under my power!”

Buffy laughed harshly at him. “Sorry, batface. After Dracula – who, I might add, is much prettier – you’re old hat.” She tilted her head at him in the most curious emulation of her lost love, feeling the joy in it, knowing how delighted it would make  _him_. “I’m pretty and I’m alive. And you – you’re nothing more than dust.”

And then she kicked him straight in the face, with a move her sixteen-year-old muscles very obviously didn’t recognize, and just as fiercely yelled at her for.

 _Fucking deal_ , she told her body, as she whirled and her heel connected to the shocked vampire’s neck.

“You know,” she said conversationally as he stared at her, wide-eyed, stumbling backward. “After a hell god, and turok-han, and about a million and one other demons, you’re really kind of… pathetic.” And then she punched him straight in the stomach and whirled to the side, catching him with a second fist and her foot, just for good measure.

“What–”

Buffy’s heel hit his shoulder then, knocking him sideways.

“Prophecies are tricky things,” she said grimly, and punched him in the throat again, her right hand sliding along the ground to retrieve the crossbow bolt her younger self had let fall. With one smooth motion, she brought it forward and jabbed it straight through the Master’s chest.

“They don’t tell you everything.”

He watched her in wide-eyed amazement for a long moment as her words fell, before stumbling backward, into the small pond that had once been her death.

“Go to hell,” she murmured nicely.

As he fell into the water, disintegrating into ash and bone, Buffy leapt forward and jumped over the bones, crushing them into the water until the surface was cloudy and broken, and the Master was nothing but a memory.

As she did so, she felt young!Buffy break the surface again, like a swimmer come up for air. With a small smile, Buffy relinquished control of her body and felt her younger self gasp.

Before any real self-reflection could happen, Xander and Angel came stumbling down into the cavern.

“Oh my god, Buffy!” Xander raced to her and nearly tackled her. “You’re okay! Oh god, you’re okay!”

Young!Buffy was a whirl of confused emotion, but she managed a small laugh. “Okay girl, that’s me.”

Angel hung back, uncertain, staring at the pond, at the melted remains of the Master.

“Mr. Batface’s final resting spot,” young!Buffy confirmed, with a slightly hysterical laugh.

Angel gave her a sharp look. “Batface? That’s what…”

Even though he didn’t finish the sentence, Buffy knew exactly how it went.  _That’s what Spike used to call him._

_I know... I know._

_You’d be so proud, Spike._

_I miss you._

 

***

 

“It was so weird, Giles. It’s like I was possessed.”

Young!Buffy sat in the library, white dress askew, sprawled against a library chair.

Giles looked positively alarmed. “Possessed?”

Young!Buffy nodded. “Well, yeah, but like… from me. I know that doesn’t make any sense at all. But it was me.” She paused. “A really badass me.”

_Damn right._

Giles seemed to mull over that for a long moment. “Perhaps the Powers That Be have intervened, my dear.”

Buffy mentally snorted.  _You could say that again._

Young!Buffy shrugged, looking somewhat thoughtful. “Maybe. It’s just… Giles, there was something odd about it.”

“Odd?”

“Like the ‘me’ knew what was going to happen… She felt… old.”

_Hey, watch it!_

Giles seemed to regard that seriously for a long moment. “I don’t know, Buffy,” he said finally, obviously uncomfortable with the idea. “But I am not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Young!Buffy giggled. “That’s a super weird phrase, Giles.”

Her Watched gave her an exasperated but warm look. “Indeed.”

Xander and Angel entered the library at that moment, quickly followed by a shaken Cordelia and a wide-eyed Willow.

Giles turned to them with interest. “The vampires?”

Cordelia pursed her lips. “Gone.”

Angel looked carefully around the library. “The Hellmouth?”

Giles threw a tight smile to Jenny Calendar, who sat a pace down from them. “Never opened, thanks to our Slayer.”

Young!Buffy laughed at that, the noise abruptly turning into a low sob. She sniffled once, embarrassment flowing through her.

_It’s okay. It’s okay._

“I’m okay,” young!Buffy told the crowd. “I’m sorry. It’s just been a really weird day.”

_It only gets weirder. Trust me._

Xander laughed a bit nervously. “Yeah, Buffy went all Conan on some moldy old bones.”

Willow threw her arms around young!Buffy then, the warmth shocking older Buffy to her core.

Young!Buffy seemed less surprised, of course, but equally pleased. “It’s okay, Wils.”

Giles watched her, a bit proudly. “I should’ve known such a thing as prophecy wouldn’t stop you.”

Young!Buffy smiled a bit sheepishly. “I guess not.”

_Only because of me, you know. Geez._

Jenny looked at the group a bit hesitantly. “Well, what do we do now?”

Giles gave a deep sigh. “I don't know about the rest of you, but I believe I am quite done with the library this evening.”

“Giles!” Willow looked at him with feigned shock. “Is that even possible?”

Young!Buffy gave her Watcher a sly look. “So much with the impossible-age.”

Giles smiled ruefully, defeated. “Yes, yes. Stickly and British, quite never allowed to have fun.”

Xander shrugged. “Well, if you’re looking for fun, I hear there’s a dance over at The Bronze…”

 

***

Buffy ended her first day alive, her younger self shimmying to a local rock band at her once-familiar haunt, with the young and innocent shades of her friends, grateful to be alive, grateful to  _be_.

When she returned home and fell into her bed, young!Buffy almost cried at the relief of it all. She was alive, was her wondering thought, a small voice that echoed through their shared mindspace.

_Goodnight, Buffy. See you next year._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue and scene from S1.12, Prophecy Girl


	3. Day 2: Make an Alliance

It was almost time to go. Buffy was moments away from Cordelia sending her through the lines of time, starting the chain of days that would wipe away the world as she knew it. Sudden misgiving filled her.

“If I do this as I mean to, Cordelia, I’m going to be erasing all of my sister Slayers.”

“That’s kind of the point, Buffy.”

Buffy gave her a hard look. “Don’t be flip, Cordy. These women have fought and died for me, for  _you_ , for the world.”

Cordelia managed to look a bit contrite at that. “I know.”

“Do you think Faith will be better off, as not a Slayer? I know Kendra will be – with the whole, ‘not being dead’ thing, but… Faith and I have been through a lot together.”

“It’s not too late to change your days, you know.”

Buffy sighed, looking around at her sparse living room. It wasn’t quite as bad as the kitchen, but it wasn’t pretty. It was just a place to be, for a time that didn’t really matter.  _Do you feel the same way, Faith? Am I giving you a chance to live a real life, or am I just taking from you?_

“I have to make a call,” Buffy said abruptly, pulling out her cell phone. She still had Faith’s number, even though it was almost a decade old.  _I guess we’ll hope I haven’t missed a number update somewhere._

Faith answered almost immediately. “Hey, B.”

“Hi.” Buffy gave a small laugh. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” the other woman agreed, in her usual, heavily casual way. “Something apocalyptic?”

“Oh, just the usual.” Buffy paused, sighing. “I’m calling because… because I’m about five seconds away from heading into the past and changing this whole show.”

There was a long silence, and then a short bark of laughter from Faith. “Sounds about right,” she said finally. Another pause. “So why are you calling me?”

“I’m thinking of not dying.” Buffy grimaced, adding, “That time in 1997.”

There was a slight shuffling sound, as if Faith switched the phone to a different ear. “So what are you looking for here, B? Permission?”

“I need to know that you’ll be better off.”

She could almost hear Faith’s shrug. “Life was shit before I got Called. And pretty messed up after it, too.” A pause. “Look, B. You do you, okay? I think we’re past the details these days.” She heard Faith exhale a small breath. “You getting back to him?”

“If it’s the last thing I do.” Buffy hesitated, fear wrenching through her, and she gripped the phone more tightly, loosening her fingers abruptly when she heard the casing crack. “Faith… if I change the wrong thing… what if he–” She cut herself off abruptly, unable to finish the thought aloud, even though it was echoing in her head ceaselessly.  _What if he doesn’t love me this time?_

Faith still understood, despite her choked sentence. “God, B, you still worry too damn much.” She laughed. “I mean, you’ve had  _two_  vampires fall in love with you.” There was a pause. “Do you know how he described what it was like, being in love with you?”

Buffy felt her heart stutter. “He talked about that with you?”

“We talked a lot, that last year.”

Buffy swallowed hard, the edges of jealous memory creeping up on her, of Faith and Spike sprawled on the basement cot in Sunnydale, looking damningly at ease. It had seemed horribly unfair at the time, that they should’ve been so comfortable, when everything between  _them_  was… not.

Buffy took a deep breath, feeling her chest ache. “What did he say?”

There was a small laugh from the other side. “He said you were like a wrecking ball in a small room. That you took his life and turned it upside down and inside out, and that there was no real way out, because you’d plowed in the door.”

Everything in Buffy sank, weighted and tired and sad. “That’s me. Buffy, destroyer of men.”

“That’s not the whole story, B.”

“If it gets worse, you can just stop there.”

“He said,” Faith continued pointedly, “that by the time you were done with the room – and you’d knocked down all the walls and the roof and the door – all you’d left was him, standing in the sun.”

“I was serious about the ‘stopping if worse’ part.”

Faith snorted. “He also said the sun didn’t burn.”

“What?”

“He said that the sun was bright and forgiving and a whole bunch of other flowery crap I don’t remember anymore.”

“Oh.” Tears stung at the edges of Buffy’s eyes. She took a deep, shuddering breath. “God, I didn’t deserve him.”

“Pretty sure that was exactly how he felt about you, B.”

 

***

 

The second day was much harder to decide on – it was  _the_  hardest, really. Buffy spent four of her precious seven allotted decision days debating this day. This was the year she first saw  _him_ , after all. The year they became enemies and temporary allies. The year her heart first shattered. It was so terribly tempting to go back to that night, to her seventeenth birthday, and fix everything that had first been broken. But then she would never have her truce with Spike. Would never give Drusilla enough reason to leave him. She’d never  _really_  have him. And that was the whole fucking point.  _To have him_. Oh, she’d agreed to stop the miserable circumstances that created the wreckage of her now-defunct present, but it was really as a side effect of everything else. Of getting back to him.

For this, some things could remain fractured.

Without the interference of Kendra leading to Angel’s capture and Spike’s consequent lameness and helpless anger, Buffy knew the world could so easily go topsy turvy. And stuck as a damningly muffled voice in her other self’s head, there wasn’t likely much she could change. Not alone. Buffy needed someone who would exist the rest of the year. Someone who could make sure her blond vampire didn’t fall off the map, or – unthinkably – become dust. Someone who rarely heard the music and instead heard the friends in surround sound. In short, she needed Drusilla.

_This is the day it all either all goes to hell in a hand basket, or not. Literally, probably._

It was, without a doubt, the riskiest of her choices. And it was the one that hurt the most – knowing Spike was in Sunnydale, and yet not seeing him. If she had been younger, less hardened, less used to waiting for things that never seemed to come, she would’ve chosen a different day. A day that had him in it. But when you’re a Slayer faced with a miserable eternity, you realize a day or two isn’t anything at all.

At least, that’s what she told herself to make it through.

And so she found herself slogging through a rather mundane Monday with her younger self. This year’s Buffy was a little more on the up and up (no doubt a little more attuned with herself after the Master incident), and noticed the older Buffy’s presence almost immediately upon waking.

“Huh,” young!Buffy murmured as she opened her eyes. “You’re back. Wonder if that means my day is going to be almost death-y again.”

_Not today. Can you hear me?_

No reply. Older Buffy sighed. Well, at least her younger self recognized her existence this time. That was something.

Buffy had thought it entirely strange yesterday (last year?) to find herself back in Sunnydale, and walking the empty halls of Sunnydale High at night. It was even stranger in the daytime, teeming with people. Especially people she knew wouldn’t make it through the year. There went George Milliman, wearing the same gray polo she’d eventually stake him in. There went Jessica Schefield, who ended existence as a demon mayor snack. There went Laurie Talbot, who really should have stayed away from cursed lipstick. On and on it went, a veritable parade of ghosts.

_Of which I guess I’m one_ , Buffy realized, wryly. In some very morbid kind of way, that made her feel better.

It was, anyhow, better entertainment than tuning in to young!Buffy’s thoughts. Beyond the standard, “God, when will this class be over?” her sixteen-year-old mind was riddled with thoughts of Angel.  _So_  many thoughts of Angel. From Angel kisses to Angel pouts to Angel hair. If Spike could have heard her brain right then, he’d have likely heaved and then laughed uproariously at her. She did, after all, have “Buffy + Angel 4ever” written in glittery pink gel pen on her notebook, outlined with a heart. Ugh.

_He leaves you, you know_ , Buffy thought with a kind of bitter resignation.  _The first in a long line of men. I know you won’t listen, but you’d be better off with a guy your age._

Not that older Buffy was really taking her own advice, she admitted. Here she was in the past, throwing away life and limb and private headspace just for the chance to get back her own centennial vampire.

Unfortunately, that line of thought was even less productive, as then her mind was snapped to thoughts of Spike. In this time, Spike was only a few days away from striking a bargain with Ford for his very short-lived afterlife. It was the first friend betrayal that would really rock her young self.  _I wish I could say it would be the last. Or the worst._

Somehow, Buffy survived the day with her young self, and felt all of her humming expectantly as young!Buffy patrolled. When the girl climbed on the school rooftop to survey the environs and spied Angel and his mad, white-dressed sire in the schoolyard, Buffy took a deep mental breath.

“This can't go on, Drusilla. It's gotta end,” Angel was saying lowly, to young!Buffy’s shock and dismay and confusion. Young!Buffy, she remembered, had no idea who this strange dark-haired woman was. Or what.

_Drusilla!_  Buffy shouted mentally. And god, this was it. If Dru didn’t hear her now, this whole day was spent for nothing. Worse than nothing, really.

The vampiress below, who seemed about to say something coy and malicious to Angel, tilted her head suddenly in the dark. “Who is that faerie I hear, all fluttering in the sky?”

_Oh, thank god_ , Buffy muttered.

Angel blinked at his child. “What?”

Dru smiled at him, all teeth. “The faerie beseeches me, all crying in the dark. But why?”

“Dru, you’re not making any sense.”

_I need your help, Drusilla._

“Sunshine seeking aid from the moon. How delicious,” the vampiress purred.

Beside her, Angel was nonplussed. In her head, young!Buffy was equally bewildered and no small measure of amused by the crazier-than-a-box-of-crackers vampiress.

_I need you to help me get Spike._

Drusilla’s eyes grew flat and hard. “You make him burn, naughty sunshine! Why should I help you destroy my knight?”

Angel frowned at her. “I’m not trying to destroy anyone, Dru. I want you to take Spike and leave.”

_Because your Daddy gets destroyed, too, Dru. And you’re all alone. Just like me. We meet once, far in the future, and you’re as unhappy as I am._  Buffy paused.  _You know he’s mine. He’s mine already. He just doesn’t know it yet._

Drusilla glared at the sky. “Sunshine takes both of my boys.”

_Trust me, you can have Angel._  It was an easy thing to barter. If the PTB wanted Angel in their service, Buffy knew they’d find a way to work around Drusilla. They’d worked around hell, after all. What was one insane vampiress?  _When I make him your real Daddy again in January, take him far, far away from here. Please. Otherwise, you’ll lose him again._

Drusilla hissed and turned a baleful gaze on a bewildered Angel. “Nasty little spark made you all stinking, Daddy.”

Angel swallowed heavily. “Dru…”

_Please!_  Buffy begged.  _Please._ Her stomach, or whatever was metaphorically left of it, clenched in near panic. She, Buffy Summers, was insane; she was going to ruin this absurd chance at correcting the past by placing the responsibility of her heart on the mad vampiress’s shoulders.

Drusilla cocked her head, clearly considering. “I will bargain with you, Sunshine,” she said at last, running a long finger down Angel’s chest. “A naughty boy for a wicked one.”

_Done._

The vampiress gave Angel a bright, childish smile. “It’s all put to paper, my dear Angel. You’re mine to come when winter is full,” and then she turned and walked away into the night.

Young!Buffy fumed all the way home.  _Who does that crazy ho think she is?_

Older Buffy simply held her breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're about to go super AU, people. I hope you're ready.
> 
> Side note: a small bit of dialogue was taken from S2.7 Lie to Me.


	4. Day 3: Help the Helpless

Her decision for day three was agony. It was easy, but it was agony. Provided everything went well (and Buffy really wasn’t sure what ‘well’ was even going to mean, beyond an undusty Spike and a non-apocalypty world), there was really no knowing where Spike would be in year three. She doubted that he would find his way back to Sunnydale for a love spell like he had before – considering Drusilla was hopefully off screwing Angelus in some far corner of the world. And wasn’t  _that_  just the most bizarro measure of well…

When Buffy woke up on day three, it was honestly a little more than she expected. Panic and anxiety rocketed through her as she became aware of her continued existence, and young!Buffy jerked from her pillow with a gasp.

“Geez, it’s a little early for a complete wiggins, ghost!Buffy,” young!Buffy muttered.

Buffy stilled.  _You felt that?_

Young!Buffy froze. “Oh. My. God.”

Buffy wanted to cheer.  _Oh, thank god. You can hear me! Finally._  She paused.  _You_  can _hear me, right?_

Young!Buffy scrambled from bed, her panic thick and coursing. “Who are you?” she demanded. “And what are you doing in my head! If you’re some demon thing, I’m so going to pummel you!”

Buffy mentally rolled her eyes.  _Oh,_ of course _it’s suspicious!Buffy that can finally hear me. So I’m totally innocent and fine when I can’t talk, but somehow evil when I’m not all mute-buttoned? Seems super with the backwards-yness._

That statement seemed to calm young!Buffy slightly, giving Buffy a moment to catch her bearings. Human still? Check. All limbs intact? Check. Sunnydale still existed outside the window? Check.

Well, so far so good. Even though none of it really told her what she wanted to know.

Young!Buffy regarded their shared mind somewhat thoughtfully then. “Assuming I’m not all ‘coo coo crazy for cocoa puffs’ right now, what are you doing here again? Don’t you have your own head to be in right about now?” She paused. “Wherever that is. I’m guessing not here, since I’m here. Oh god, this is way too much thinkage.”

_Uhm, well… you know how you just called me ‘ghost!Buffy’? That’s pretty much it._

Young!Buffy wrinkled her nose. “So you’re like haunting me on an annual basis?”

_Temporarily._

“Temporarily until what?” A frown. “Or when. I’m not really sure which way that goes.”

 _When, in my case._  Buffy paused.  _Although, actually… what makes sense, too._

The two Buffys paused and gave eerily identical, uncertain laughs, although only young!Buffy’s was aloud.

“Well this is super of the bizarro,” young!Buffy said, biting her lip. “What do you want? I mean, no offense, but I kind of like having my head to myself.”

_Yeah, aspect of the demon isn’t so fun, is it?_

“Huh?”

Buffy paused _. Crap. Sorry, that hasn’t happened yet._

Young!Buffy’s eyes widened. “I was right before! You’re a future me!”

Buffy sighed.  _Yeah._  She felt a giant well of questions bubble up in her younger self.  _Whoa! Just… hold on a second, okay? Yes, I’m from the future. No, I’m not going to tell you anything about it, except to say that it is of the major suckage and I’m hitching a ride with you for a while to make sure it doesn’t actually come to pass._

Young!Buffy frowned. “That bad, huh?” she said seriously, all the child gone from her voice.

 _That bad_ , Buffy agreed quietly.

Young!Buffy shifted uncomfortably. “Right. Well. I mostly believe you, because we’re uber scarily alike… and you  _feel_  like me… and you did save my life two years ago… but…”

_We’d better go see Giles?_

“Yeah.”

_Perfect._

Young!Buffy frowned and Buffy felt the sudden poke of her younger self trying to peer into her older thoughts.  _Oh, crap._ With a kind of mental slap at her young self, Buffy gathered her existence tightly around herself, shielding everything she could. It felt a little like throwing a sheet over their pane of glass. Kind of effective, but all the silhouettes were still there.

“Hey!”

Buffy sighed.  _Believe me, you don’t want to know._

“I don’t trust you.”

_That’s usually a stand-up course of action when you have another head in yours. In this case, you’re just being silly._

“I’m not silly,” young!Buffy said with an indignant pout.

_Oh please, that lip only works on guys. And I’m you, anyway, so put it away._

Young!Buffy exhaled noisily. “You’re really kind of bitchy.”

_Cordelia recently said the same thing._

“God, Cordelia’s still around, whenever you’re from?”

_In a way._

“Vague much?”

 _Yes,_  Buffy said unapologetically.

Young!Buffy huffed at her, but got dressed without further questions. As she took them down the stairs, Buffy felt a strange tickle on the part of her consciousness that she had always associated with the back of her neck. There was a vampire in the house? It was only as young!Buffy headed into the entryway that the feeling became crystal clear.  _Oh my god._  A sudden, thundering wave of yearning and relief and confusion assaulted her younger self, who stumbled against the wall.

“What the what was that about?!”

Buffy felt her existence quiver.  _Spike,_  she mentally whispered.  _Spike is here._

Young!Buffy shrugged. “Well, yeah, he kind of lives here.”

 _He_ what _?_

“Lives here,” young!Buffy repeated easily, seeming amused by her older self’s rigid shock. “Apparently not from wherever you came from? Ugh, that would be nice.”

All of Buffy’s remaining existence trembled, reeling.  _How?_

“How? Like why is he here?”

_Yes._

Young!Buffy sighed. “It’s all mom’s fault.” She tugged on a boot, shrugging. “I guess the night-gowned skank he used to call a girlfriend is really to blame, though.”

 _Drusilla._  Relief flooded through Buffy.

Young!Buffy wrinkled her nose, not understanding the emotion. “Uhm, yeah. Anyway, she left him on the front porch…” There was a hesitant pause. “In pretty bad shape, actually.” A wave of guilt and pain flooded her younger self. “She and Angelus kind of did a number on him. Left some kind of horrible note about him being a late Christmas gift. They even, uhm, gift-wrapped him. Put a bow around his neck and everything.”

Buffy burst out laughing, to her young self’s shock.  _She didn’t!_

Young!Buffy frowned. “Oh, she did. The heartless ho. And geez, might say the same about you. I mean, I’m all for the dusty Spike fan club, but… I’m not laughing at him.”

Buffy didn’t even bother to try and explain.  _I’m not laughing at him_ , she said simply.  _So how come he’s living here?_

Young!Buffy sighed. “Well, I wasn’t exactly home when mom found him. And she didn’t know that I was the Slayer yet. She, erm, might’ve gotten really, really angry at me when I tried to stab the half-dead ‘man’ passed out on the couch.”

_She didn’t kick you out this time, did she?_

Young!Buffy blinked. “She kicked me out in another time? Yikes. That must’ve sucked.”

_It did. And I’ll take that as a no._

“Uh, yeah. I mean, major with the no.” Young!Buffy paused at the front door. “I thought telling her he was an evil vampire – and being able to prove the bumpies – would have done something, but  _nooooo_. Mom decided the heartbroken bleached wreck needed her help instead. He’s kind of been here since.”

Buffy mentally smiled, bittersweet nostalgia touching her.  _Mom always did like him_. She paused.  _Can I see him? Please?_

Young!Buffy blinked. “You want to see Spike,” she repeated.

_Yes, please._

With a shrug, young!Buffy steered them in to the kitchen, stopping just inside the doorway.

And there he was. Oh god,  _there he was_ , wheeled up to the countertop and sipping blood from a mug, like it was any other Saturday instead of some strange approximation of Buffy heaven. He was, she saw with a kind of shock, in a wheelchair, as he had been for several months of her past the previous year. He seemed mightily unconcerned about it though, looking almost completely relaxed with his meal. His hair was cut short and carefully gelled, and he wore what she considered to be his ‘Spike Classic’ garb of a black tee and unbuttoned red shirt under his duster. His face was just as she remembered, all sharp angles and a full pouting mouth. He looked… beautiful.

Aching, broken, torn want spilled from Buffy before she could stop it, to young!Buffy’s horror as she translated the chaos.

“Oh my god _, I’m in love with Spike?!_ ”

The vampire in question looked up sharply at her, blue eyes wide, brow raised. “Why, Slayer,” he drawled mockingly. “Not exactly a hallmark moment, but I guess it’ll do.”

_Oh god, I’ve missed your voice._

Young!Buffy gasped in outrage. “No!” Her fists balled up angrily. “No. No. No. No. No!”

Buffy sighed.  _You know, repeating that really isn’t going to change the fact. Believe me, I’ve spent more years on that fucking river in Egypt than you’ve been alive. But the fact that I love Spike’s not the bad part._

“ _Seems super of the bad to me!”_

Spike was now watching young!Buffy with unabashed incredulity, glancing around the kitchen as if there might be a missing second person in her conversation. “Have you gone completely sack of hammers, Slayer?”

_The bad part is that he’s dead._

Young!Buffy’s rant halted abruptly. “Oh.” Silence. “How?”

_The first time? Closing the Hellmouth and saving the world. The second time? Saving Angel’s idiotic ass._

“Wow, now I  _know_  you’re not me.”

Spike wrinkled his nose at her. “You get into your mum’s liquor cabinet, Slayer?”

Irritated, Buffy sent a barrage of Spike memories at her younger self. Spike standing at the bottom of her staircase, looking at her with wonder and what she now knew to be love the night before she died on Glory’s tower. His equally loving and shocked expression the night she came back. The pressure of his lips on hers, fierce and throbbing in the alley. The feel of his cock plunging into her as the abandoned house fell around them. The all-consuming pleasure of his lips sucking her clit during one of their many sessions in his crypt. The utter security of being held in his arms. The light in his eyes as he burned.

It was, as Spike would have said, dirty pool. But to everything a place and time.

Overwhelmed by the assault, young!Buffy slid to the floor with a flaming face and trembling gasps.

 _I’m sorry,_  Buffy said, when her attack was over,  _but it took me long enough to admit what he means to me. I’m not going to waste any more time dealing with denial land._

Spike had wheeled himself over to her, brow furrowed with concern. “Slayer?”

Young!Buffy’s eyes snapped to his, and her face paled as she remembered all the intimacy that Buffy had shared. Her young brain kind of got stuck on the vision of his cock, to Buffy’s amusement.

 _It_ is _the nicest I’ve ever seen. And he uses it really, really well._

Young!Buffy stumbled to her feet and fled the kitchen. She was out the back door before Spike could even call after her. And then she was sprinting, heart thundering, toward Sunnydale High.

_Buffy?_

“Oh my god, shut up!” Young!Buffy demanded, almost hysterically.

Buffy fell silent for several minutes, listening as her younger self had a major freakout.

_Oh my god, Spike?? Why? And holy cow, he really looks like that under there? Oh, no soooo not thinking that! Spike??_

It mostly circled like that the entire way to the high school, until Buffy finally had enough.

 _Stop acting all damage girl! Look, he’s not Angel. He doesn’t turn evil when you sleep with him._   _Although_ , she mused,  _some of the things he does with his tongue are pretty evil_. At her young self’s gasp, she hurried along.  _He was the only person to stick by me when everything else had gone to shit and everyone else had abandoned me. And he’ll do the same for you, if you give him the chance._

“He doesn’t turn evil because he’s already there!”

_He won’t always be._

“So what, I should just completely forget that he used to be a murdering psychopath until last year?”

_You forgot with Angel._

Her young self stopped abruptly by the high school doors. “He had a soul,” she said, very quietly.

Buffy laughed lowly, humorlessly.  _A cursed one, but yes. Well guess what? Spike got one too, in my time, so he could be good enough for me. Fought for it. First vampire potentially ever who’s done that. What does that tell you?_

Young!Buffy just trembled and threw herself into the high school hallways. “I can’t– I can’t… Stop talking!”

Buffy acquiesced with a shrug. She managed silence for only another minute before she couldn’t help herself.  _And I don’t think he’s nearly as evil as you suspect._

Young!Buffy clenched her fists furiously. “Well, you don’t know jack squat.”

Buffy snorted.  _I know that when I broke his back in what would have been last year for you, he was only in a wheelchair for a few months._

Young!Buffy frowned deeply. “What’s your point?”

_I’m pretty sure Spike doesn’t need that wheelchair._

“ _What?!_ ”

Buffy smiled mentally.  _But he’s safe with you all. Mom treats him well. He has a home. He’s always wanted that – a family. As long as you’ve thought him harmless, he’s been allowed to stay._

Young!Buffy’s emotions pulsed anger and shock and fear.

Buffy rolled her eyes.  _Look, he could have probably killed you in your sleep every night for almost the past year. And he hasn’t. Think about it._

Young!Buffy stilled at that. “Why didn’t he?”

_I already told you._

And then young!Buffy was at the library doors. She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I just…” her voice trailed off weakly. “Do you think he… likes me?”

Buffy shrugged.  _Yes. Actually, he loves you. Only he doesn’t know it yet. In my time, that took a couple more years. Your Spike seems a little ahead of the curve._

Young!Buffy sighed. To her credit, she wasn’t nearly as freaked as Buffy knew she would have been. “Yeah, well… we might’ve bonded a little over our evil exes, who both tried to kill us.” And then, with a shake of her head, she entered the library.

Giles stood near their research table, reading intently from a volume. He looked up at her with obvious surprise.

“Buffy.” He glanced over at the clock. “You’re three hours early for our session.” He peered at her a little more closely. “And you are looking rather windswept. Trouble?”

Young!Buffy sighed heavily, sliding into a chair across from her Watcher. “You could say that,” she muttered.

_Hey! I’m here to help._

Young!Buffy snorted derisively. “Right. Helpful girl. That’s you.”

Giles blinked at her. “Pardon?”

Young!Buffy gestured wildly around her head. “You remember that feeling I had two years ago of being possessed? The day I didn’t die? And then last year, when nothing really happened?”

“Erm, well, yes.”

“Well, it’s back again. And now she’s  _talking_.”

_Okay, now who’s being the bitchy one?_

Giles stared at her. “The, ah, possession is speaking to you?” He sat down abruptly. “Who does it claim to be?”

“Me.” Young!Buffy rolled her eyes. “Well, a future me. Who has some super questionable taste in guys.”

_Because you’re one to talk. We’ve both slept with Mr. Evil in the Morning._

Young!Buffy flinched. “You couldn’t have come back for that last year?”

 _You wouldn’t have listened to me._  Buffy wrinkled her metaphorical nose.  _And I had less than zero desire to live through that again_.

Giles was watching her with undisguised amazement and worry. “A future you... But why?”

“Apparently things aren’t so hot in future land.”

Giles pulled off his spectacles. “Well this is… this is quite extraordinary.”

“Yeah, it’s real Freaky Friday-tastic,” young!Buffy said with dripping sarcasm. “Do we have a way to figure out if she’s telling the truth?”

Giles looked thoughtful at that, the edges of his glasses between his lips.

_Tell him to put you in a trance. Practice the stone thingies._

“Stone thingies?”

Giles glanced up at her from where he was starting to flip through a large volume, his eyes widening. “Vibratory stones? That was to be our lesson for this afternoon.”

Young!Buffy shrugged. “Cool. We’ll just do it early, then.”

Giles paused for a long moment before nodding abruptly. “Yes. Yes, of course. Allow me just a few moments.” He got up and headed into his office.

Young!Buffy sighed, her nose scrunching up as she caught the slight edges of Buffy’s anger and disappointment. “Huh?”

_Don’t worry about it._

“Okay, the tight lippy-ness? Getting really old.”

Buffy sighed _. I have a lot of baggage that’s not yours to carry._

“Are we talking a suitcase or a trunkful?”

_More like a freight train._

Young!Buffy worried the bottom of her lip. “Do I… do I mess up things so spectacularly?”

_Some things. A lot of things get messed up for you._

Giles came back out of his office then, with an armload of different crystals. “Ah, right, then.” He paused heavily and settled down a large blue stone on the table. “I had planned to start with the amethyst, but perhaps we will move right on to the grounding crystal.”

Young!Buffy stared at it curiously. “Pretty. What’s it do?”

“It’s for focusing.” He shifted uneasily. “It may allow this, ah, other Buffy figure to come forward.”

“Cool. So what do I have to do with it?”

“Just concentrate on the flaw in its center.”

As young!Buffy did so, Buffy felt their bit of window pane opening again and she sighed in relief as her limbs responded to her. With a slightly sardonic smile, she blinked up at her wary Watcher.

“Hi, Giles. It’s been a minute.”

Giles eyed her askance. “Has it?”

“Years, actually.”

“Ah, yes,” Giles said. “You’re claiming to be Buffy from some time in the future.” He paused. “And when exactly might that be?”

“2023.”

Giles gasped. “Good lord. You live that long?”

Buffy gave him a small, bitter smile that she could tell took the Watcher aback. “Not so much. And yes.” She sighed. “You know how this Buffy almost died at the Master’s hands?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, last time, I actually did.”

“Good lord.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t stay dead.”

Giles swallowed heavily. “As I must imagine.”

Buffy sighed. “It was the easiest death, really.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Buffy shrugged. “Oh, I’ve died – really died – three times, although only one was for any substantial amount of time. I’ve been mostly dead dozens of times.”

“Good lord,” her Watcher said again.

The expression, one of the cornerstone sounds of her young Slayer life, made her mouth quirk up. Then she sighed. “There’s a lot of murky water under our shared bridge in the future, Giles. My present is broken, but so are we.”

Giles cleared his throat. “Is that so? Then what exactly, I dare ask, are you hoping to correct by being here?”

“Besides the general shittiness that my life became? Well, right now I’m here to give you the same chance I’ve gotten: to make different choices.” Buffy eyed him sharply. “It’s no coincidence that I’m here today... the day you start the Cruciamentum drugs.”

Giles looked pole-axed. Very slowly, he slid into the chair across from hers. “You know about that?” His voice was hoarse.

“Know about it? I lived it, Giles.” Buffy took a deep breath, knowing her tone was angrier than she liked. “Look, if you do this, she’ll never trust you again. Not like this. Not with the complete faith that she does now.” Buffy sighed, gesturing to her young body. “She needs you to be on her side. After today, I’ll be gone until next year and she’ll be alone again.”

Giles looked startled at that. “Buffy’s not alone.”

Buffy regarded him sadly. “She’s always alone. One girl, Giles. ” Her mouth twisted. “Well, this time.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Buffy paused, ignoring his question. “I know you love her,” she said instead. “And if you betray her now, you’re going to lose a piece of that love and you’ll never get it back. The Council fired you last time – in my time – anyway, after the fact. So give this Buffy the choice. Don’t leave her helpless.”

Giles sighed heavily, looking aggrieved. “You must believe, I don’t want to do this. It’s barbaric and archaic and cruel.”

“I know. So don’t.” Buffy paused. “You trust the fate of the world to her hands, so why not her own fate? Why not yours?”

Giles looked at her with sudden clarity. “Good lord, it  _is_ you, isn’t it? And you’re quite grown-up, indeed.”

Buffy barked a laugh. “Not in the ways I really wanted to be.”

Her Watcher regarded her a bit thoughtfully, a bit sadly. “It seems I am not the Watcher I should be to you, in this future of yours. I don’t know what all it is that I will have done, but… would it mean anything at all for me to apologize for it now?”

Buffy felt sudden, hot tears threaten the corners of her eyes. “It would mean more than you can imagine,” she said softly.

“Well then, I am deeply sorry, Buffy.”

Neither Watcher nor Slayer spoke for a long moment after that.

“How much of this conversation do you think my Buffy heard?” Giles said at last.

Buffy considered that for a moment. Her young self was fully entranced this time, not just thralled into paralysis as she had been with the Master. Her emotions were curiously blank, and her thoughts quiet. “I don’t think any of it. The stone is working on her.”

“Ah.” A pause. “Shall we let my Buffy return then?”

“Yes.” Buffy tapped her fingers thoughtfully. “Listen, this will be a lot easier in the future if Buffy understands that I’m only here to help her. And she kind of understands, but you buying in will mean a lot. If I can get full autonomy in certain situations, I can save everyone a lot of grief.”

“Ah, autonomy?”

“Like I am now? All mobile girl?”

Giles chuckled. “Indeed.” He looked at her speculatively. “I can teach her some meditation techniques that may make it easier for you to, ah, co-exist.”

“Thank you.” Buffy paused, turning back to the stone. “And Giles?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“It’s good to see you again. This you, I mean.”

“I am sorry,” he told her again.

“I know.”

With a brief hesitation, Giles ran his hand in front of the stone and young!Buffy snapped awake with a blink, taking over control of her body. She frowned.

“What happened?”

Giles sighed. “I had a rather interesting conversation with your visiting self.”

“So you believe it’s her? Err, me?”

“Yes, I do.” Her Watcher paused. “Buffy… your birthday…”

Young!Buffy groaned. “Oh, Giles, you’re not going to make me do some stupid training are you? I told you, my dad is taking me to the Ice Capades.”

Her Watcher blinked. “What? Ah, no. This is somewhat more serious.”

“The Ice Capades are pretty serious. I mean, it’s dancing. And ice. And popcorn.” She paused pointedly. “And cotton candy, Giles. Really, really important cotton candy.”

“I trust that the level of sugar is incredibly relevant to the ice experience,” Giles said with a sigh, sounding very wearied. “But this is quite something else.”

Young!Buffy paused at his tone. “What is it?”

Giles reached into his bag on the table and took out the very hauntingly familiar slim case, with the needle and serum that had once left her helpless and hurting. Buffy listened quietly as her Watcher explained about it and about what he was supposed to do – and what he had decided not to do. Young!Buffy was aghast.

“They were going to toss me in, helpless, with a psychotic vampire?!” Young!Buffy rose to her feet and paced the library. “Because, right, you when finally have a Slayer with any kind of experience, better try to kill her off!”

“As I said, my dear, it’s a very antiquated ritual.”

“It’s… it’s horrible!”

 _Well, Travers was a horrible excuse for breathing space,_  Buffy added dryly.

Her younger self barely listened, continuing to rant angrily. Both Buffy and Giles just listened, until finally she wore herself out.

“I think,” Giles said finally, when all was quiet, “that we can continue this discussion tomorrow. And in the meantime, I shall contact the Council and inform them that we will not be participating in their… trial.”

The “we” warmed Buffy’s heart.  _Thank you_ , she whispered to him again.

“I love you, Giles,” young!Buffy said instead, throwing her arms around her startled Watcher.

Giles very stiffly patted her on the back, looking entirely embarrassed, although admittedly very pleased. “Yes, yes. Go on home now, Buffy.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Young!Buffy was mostly quiet on the way home, leaving Buffy to her own thoughts. And her thoughts were almost entirely on the vampire waiting for her on Revello Drive.

“Ugh, can you not?”

Buffy sighed.  _Listen, when you haven’t seen the man you love in twenty years, come talk to me again, okay?_

Young!Buffy’s eyes widened. “Twenty years? I live that long?”

Buffy laughed.  _That was Giles’s reaction too. And the answer is kind of. There have been several deaths thrown in. And believe me, you don’t want the result of those._

“I guess I’ll have to take your word on that.”

Buffy paused thoughtfully.  _Before I go today, there are some things I need to tell you, about graduation and such._

“Graduation?” young!Buffy repeated, nonplussed.

_Yep. Things are different than they used to be, so I’m not sure what will happen if I don’t give you some details._

“Oh, geez, it’s something apocalyptic, isn’t it? I swear, spring is like open season for baddies who want to end the world.”

Buffy paused.  _Really? What happened last year?_

“This horrible Acathla guy. Did he not happen for you?”

 _Um. He did… just…_  Buffy sighed.  _Last time, Angelus activated him._

Young!Buffy stopped. “Angelus? But he was gone months before that.”

 _Yeah, well, not in my time._ Buffy mentally shrugged.  _Anyway, what happened?_

“Oh, the usual. Ambitious demons and world suckage. Ended up impaling this gross demon on his own sword before sending him into hell.” Young!Buffy paused. “Did I… did you send Angelus to hell, then?”

_Worse. I sent Angel to hell. We re-ensouled him, but not in time. Not before he’d already opened the portal._

Young!Buffy stopped in shock. “Oh god.”

 _Yep._  Buffy paused.  _Where is Angelus, anyway?_

Young!Buffy shrugged casually, though her emotions were turmoiled. “Dunno. Not here. It’s not like I can just go looking for him. Or that I want to.” She paused, hope lighting her thoughts. “Did you say re-ensouled? We… we tried that in our time.” Guilt flashed through her. “It didn’t work.”

Buffy sighed.  _Jenny Calendar is still dead?_

“Yeah.” Young!Buffy paused outside her house. “And it’s all my fault.”

 _It’s not your fault._  Buffy gave her a kind of mental hug. It _’s Angel’s fault for not looking into his curse, okay? The guy only had a freaking century to learn about it._

“I guess,” young!Buffy said, but she didn’t feel convinced.

 _Try dating someone your age? It’ll help to move on_ , Buffy suggested reluctantly, against everything in her that screamed for Spike. She knew that, unfortunately, her younger self just wasn’t there yet.

Young!Buffy shrugged. “I tried a little. Dated this guy Scott for a while. Didn’t work out.”

Buffy smiled a bit sadly.  _Well, not to burst your bubble, but it won’t ever, you know. Not in the long term. You need a little monster in your man._

“Is that from somewhere? You say it like it’s a quote or something.”

 _It is._  Buffy sighed.  _Can we go see Spike again? Please?_

“Ugh, the stupid vampire probably thinks I’m insane after this morning.” Young!Buffy frowned. “I guess I’d better go find out if he’s actually all disable-y, though.”

_Just do me a favor? Don’t… don’t punish him for not hurting you. Give him the chance to be good._

Young!Buffy sighed as she stepped into her house. “I’m not dating Spike,” she told her older self firmly.

_I’m not asking you to._

“Well, okay then.”

They found Spike in the living room next to the couch, reading, her mother sitting at the desk looking through receipts.

_Mom._

Young!Buffy froze. “What about mom?”

Buffy hesitated.  _Nothing right now._

Both Joyce and Spike turned to look at her, Spike giving her mom a pointed look.

“Told you she was off her bird today,” the vampire said dryly.

Joyce looked at her daughter with slight concern, and older Buffy fought the waves of love and longing that coursed through her. During her week of decision making, Buffy was a little ashamed to realize that she’d hardly thought about her mom. As horrid as her sickness and death had been, it hadn’t greatly affected anything word-endy and so had ended up in the gigantic file of discarded memories.

“Buffy, honey? Are you feeling alright?”

Young!Buffy went for the perky route, giving her mom a blinding smile under Spike’s suspicious gaze. “Of course, mom, everything’s fine. I just, uh, have a lot on my mind.” She strode over to Spike, hands on her hips. “Get up.”

Spike’s eyes widened. “What?” Then his gaze narrowed dangerously. “Are you daft? I'm in a sodding wheelchair!”

“Yep. One that you don’t need.” Young!Buffy’s voice was Slayer hard.

“Buffy!” her mom protested. “What is the matter with you!”

Young!Buffy ignored her. “Get. Up. Before I dump you out of that chair.”

She and Spike stared at each other for a long, tense moment, before Spike’s expression crumpled into something incredibly defeated, so pained that young!Buffy was set awash with guilt.

“Right, Slayer,” he sighed.

“What is going on?” Joyce demanded.

Spike glanced over at her mom apologetically. “Joyce… I…” His lips pursed into a thin line and he very stiffly rose to his feet.

Joyce gasped. “Spike! You can stand?”

“Yeah,” Spike said softly, never taking his eyes off Buffy. He swallowed heavily, looking bitter and resigned. “Gonna stake me now, Slayer?”

_If you do anything even remotely related to hurting him, I will make my next visit your day from hell._

“Oh, relax,” young!Buffy said, rolling her eyes. She glared at the confused vampire. “You’re going to make yourself useful from now on.”

Spike blinked at her. “Useful?”

“Mhm. You're going to be Scooby back-up. On-call vampire for apocalyptic situations. Think of it as back rent. And I swear to god, Spike, if you even so much as snack from someone, I will end your sorry existence.”

Spike was staring at her, agape. Then his expression stilled into something thoughtful, defiant. “Maybe I’ll just be on my merry way out of town, then.”

“Right. Because you couldn’t have possibly just done that anytime you pleased in the last however many months.”

Spike flinched, jaw clenched, and Buffy’s heart ached.  _He has nowhere to go._

Young!Buffy sighed. “As long as my mom still wants you here, you can stay.” She paused. “I’m sure Giles will have a million things to say about it, but whatever.”

_Thank you._

Spike’s expression shifted into wondering curiosity. “You trust me then, Slayer?”

“About as far as I can throw you.”

A smile flickered on Spike’s face. “Reckon that’s a few feet, at least.”

 

***

 

Young!Buffy crawled into bed later that night, sighing as she snuggled under the covers.

“I really hope you know what you’re talking about,” she muttered.

Buffy smiled inside their head.  _I do. That was clever, what you did earlier. And kind. Thank you._

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to end up like you, do I?”

_Not even remotely._

“Goodnight, ghost!Buffy.”

_Goodnight, Buffy. See you next year._


	5. Day 4: Prepare for the Hard Year

Waking on day four was an expected comfort, tinged with bright curiosity.

_Please tell me you didn't sleep with Parker this time._

Young!Buffy groaned and blinked open her eyes. "Well, hello to you, too."

_Hi. Sorry._

Young!Buffy sat up in bed with a small laugh. They were in young!Buffy's dorm room at UC Sunnydale. It looked mostly as Buffy remembered, with her trunk of weapons stashed in the closet and her floral patterned comforter on the bed. Willow was asleep a few feet away, facing the opposite wall in a tangle of mismatched covers. "Are you talking about Parker Abrams? Ugh, that guy is such a skeez." Flickers of amusement ran through her young self. "You're telling me you actually slept with him?"

 _Be nice. I was in kind of a bad mental spot for... well, years, actually._  Buffy paused.  _Scratch that. Not sure I’ve ever left._

"I'm sure Parker helped  _loads_ with that."

_I see you've gotten more sarcastic since last year._

"Older. Wiser. Prettier."

Buffy laughed.  _It's good to see... err, hear? you again._

Young!Buffy smiled. "You too." She shrugged. "Anyway, definitely a no to nth degree on the Parker front. I'm dating Eddie." Warm, fond feelings radiated from her.

Buffy blinked.  _Who?_

Young!Buffy sent her a rapid fire collection of images of some cute and awkward guy with a mop of brown hair who dressed like an East Coast prep school kid. In what Buffy highly suspected was payback for her dirty pool last year, young!Buffy spared no details on the intimacy, sharing a myriad of kisses with Eddie and mid coital actions with Eddie (who did, Buffy admitted, have a pretty nice body) and murmurs of affection with Eddie. Overall, she got the impression that he made young!Buffy incredibly happy.

Still, Buffy frowned.  _I don't... Oh! Eddie._  She sighed.  _He got turned into a vampire in my time, during the first week of school. I had to stake him._

Young!Buffy gasped, a pang going through her younger self at the idea. Her thoughts hardened. "It was the bitchy blonde vamp ho who was stealing stuff, wasn't it?”

_Yep. You met her still?_

"Unfortunately. For her, that is. Spike, uh, sniffed her out when he and mom came to help me move in."

A low pang went through Buffy.  _How is he?_

"Spike? Um, fine, I guess." There was a distinct aura of embarrassment at that.

_What's that about? What happened?_

"It's so totally your fault."

_Did you sleep with him?_

"What?! No!" Young!Buffy flushed. "We were arguing a few weeks ago, and he brought up my ‘I love you’ slip from last year. I made the mistake of actually telling him the truth about it this time. I was just super annoyed and I didn't really mean for it to come out, but... you know."

_Oh, yeah. Us Buffys and words._

"Non-mixy."

_Always._

There was a pause.

 _So what happened?_  Buffy prompted.

"Uhm, well, we both kind of stood there for a minute and then Spike just left the room. Next time I saw him, he was really, really drunk. We haven't said much to each other lately." She shrugged. "Not sure what happened with you and your Spike, but I'm pretty sure this Spike is as ooked by the idea of him and me as I am." She giggled. "I think I even heard him mutter something about 'perversion of nature’."

Buffy couldn't help but smile.  _I'm sure he did._  She remained silent, knowing it wouldn't do any good to clue in her younger self that the sentiment wouldn't last. A brief shard of worry creased her thoughts. What if this Buffy was actually, truly happy with her boyfriend? What if she never felt the same pull toward Spike that Buffy had?

"You're doing a terrible job of hiding your thoughts right now," young!Buffy told her, getting out of bed and pulling on her robe.

_Sorry._

Young!Buffy sighed. "100% with the honesty, because you're me? Spike is stupidly attractive and I'm sure he's really... talented. Like more sure than I ever want to be, thanks to you. And you were right, there's a lot more to him than I would've given him credit for."

_But?_

"But he's still a stupid vampire! And... and do you have any idea what it's like for someone to tell you this thing you don't want is kind of sort of probably inevitable?"

Both Buffys paused at that, with similar impressions of 'duh.'

"Right," young!Buffy said, with a giggle. "Sorry."

Buffy sighed.  _If I thought it was inevitable, I wouldn't be worried. Okay?_

"Is this love you guys had really so amazing?"

Buffy winced.  _I wouldn't exactly call it that._

"Well, what would you call it?"

_Consuming. Painful._

"Those do not exactly sound of the good."

_It was different at the end. Empowering. Comforting. And it didn't have to be like it was. There were just a lot of mistakes on both sides._

Young!Buffy bit her lip and sat back down on her bed. “I really like Eddie,” she said softly. “He’s sweet and he’s funny, and he makes me feel good when I’m around him.”

 _So I can tell._  There was silence to that, piquing Buffy’s interest.  _I sense a big huge whopping ‘but’ must be looming nearby?_

“He… I haven’t told him about me.”

 _Not surprised._  Buffy paused, sensing her young self’s conflicted emotions.  _But you want to?_

“Well, sure.”

_I sense another ‘but.’_

“But it means telling him that I’ve been kind of lying to him about who I am.”

_What exactly have you been lying about? I mean, beyond the usual ‘I’m off to study all night because I’m totally study girl’ thing? Which doesn’t count, you know. Not as something horrible, anyway._

Insecurity welled in her young self and Buffy caught sudden snatches of images she could tell her younger self didn’t mean to send. Young!Buffy accidently gripping Eddie’s arm too hard and leaving an obscene bruise. Young!Buffy’s tight control when she had Eddie’s most private parts inside her, not really knowing if she could damage him horribly. Young!Buffy’s frustration at pretending to be less than Olympically gifted at darts in the bar.

_Oh, that._

Young!Buffy’s nose scrunched up with anger and frustration. “Yes, that!” She placed her head in her hands. “Why did you have to tell me? I really don’t like you sometimes.”

 _Tell you?_  Buffy frowned in thought.  _Oh… that you need a little monster in your man._  She shrugged.  _I told you because it’s true. Be glad you’ve known it early. It took me years longer to figure it out, after way too much heart wreckage._

“Again with the not liking you so much.”

“Buffy?” Willow was sitting up in bed, staring at her friend with sleepy confusion. “Who are you talking to?”

Young!Buffy waved at her head, her face drawn apologetically. “Sorry, Wils. My less pleasant other half is visiting today.”

“Oh!” The redhead’s eyes grew bright. “Oh, that is just so cool.”

Buffy blinked.  _Did you really just call me what I think you did?_

Young!Buffy made a face. “Sorry.”

 _No, I mean…_  Buffy felt a throb of heartache pass through her. _Spike called me that once. 'The other, not so pleasant Buffy.'_

“Other to what? Do you come from the land of like a million Buffys or something?”

Buffy groaned.  _You don’t want to know._

“Oh my god, now I have to.”

_It was a Buffybot._

“A what with the huh?”

_A robot made to look like me. And act like me… mostly._

Young!Buffy’s thoughts were incredulous. “You made a robot of yourself?”

_Uhm. No. Spike did._

“Why?”

_Why do you think?_

A pause. Then, “Oh. My. God!”

Willow giggled. “I have no idea what you two are talking about, but I want in! I mean, Buffy robots?”

Young!Buffy sent a wide-eyed look her friend’s way. “Ugh, trust me, Wils, I wish I didn’t know.”

 _You pushed the issue,_  Buffy reminded her.

“And so totally remind me of this the next time I do it.”

Willow swung her feet around to Buffy’s side of the room, elbows on her thighs, looking completely captivated. She waved merrily at young!Buffy. “Hi, ghost!Buffy!”

Buffy laughed despite herself.  _Hello, Willow._

Young!Buffy rolled her eyes. “She says hi.”

Willow grinned her charmingly lopsided grin. “Can I talk to her?”

Buffy perked up at that.  _Giles taught you some techniques?_

“Well, yeah, but I obviously haven’t tested them…” Young!Buffy sighed. “Guess there’s no time like the now, huh? Especially since I bet I know why you’re here today.”

_Oh?_

“Angelus.”

Buffy felt a trickle of ice flow through her.  _What? What about Angelus?_

“Oh, maybe you don’t. I forgot he went all swordy and hellish in your time... Anyway, he’s back.” Pain and anger and regret flowed through her younger self. “He’s after something called the Gem of Amara.”

Buffy paused for a moment.  _Huh._

“Huh? Huh why?”

 _I_ am _here because of the Gem. Only it wasn’t Angelus last time and.... since I was pretty sure after yesterday that who took it last time wouldn't be taking it this time... I guess I just figured today's event wouldn't happen._  Buffy gave a sort of wry smile.  _I caught the end of a discussion Tara and Willow were having once. It was mostly way over my head – super witchy and sciencey and all – but they were talking about time travel. They kept mentioning a theory that basically said some events were bound to happen no matter who did them. Filling some kind of universal need or something. I'm starting to think that theory is right._

Young!Buffy frowned. "Okay. Two questions."

_Fire away._

"Who is Tara?"

Buffy blinked.  _Oh. Crap. You don't know her yet. Um... future friend._

Young!Buffy considered that. "Hm. Okay. Second question: who took it last time?"

_One guess._

"Ugh." Young!Buffy sighed. “Why am I not even remotely surprised.”

_Because we both know Spike too well for that?_

“And you  _still_ didn’t kill him?”

_We both know how good of a fighter he is. And he kind of caught me on a bad day._

Young!Buffy didn’t miss the tinge of regretful disgust. “Ohhhh. Parker. Got it.”

Willow blinked. “Parker? What does he have to do with anything? And… can I pretty please talk to ghost!Buffy now?”

Buffy laughed inside her young self’s head, knowing the sound was bitter and dark.  _She has no idea how incredibly not friends we are in my present._

Young!Buffy blinked. “Wait, really? Oh…”

_It won’t happen this time, if I can help it. I promise._

“I hope not.” Young!Buffy paused. “But you still want to talk to her?”

 _Sure. I still love_ this _Willow._

The Willow in question was watching the half exchange anxiously, her expression drooping. “She doesn’t want to talk to me?”

“She absolutely does,” young!Buffy assured her. “Just give us a sec.”

“Oh, good,” Willow said, nearly bouncing on the bed. “Because I’ve been wanting to meet her since you told me and going all ra-ra fan girl over here. And wow, that sounded super obsessive, didn’t it? I promise I’m not just some crazy wacko-type lady.”

Young!Buffy snorted. “Wils, she knows you as well as I do. Or some similar version of you, anyway. I think she understands.”

“Oh. Right. Much with the right-yness.”

Young!Buffy laughed and closed her eyes, taking a long, deep breath. “I don’t really know if this will work,” she warned her other self.

_It’ll work._

“You are way more sure than I am.”

_Just think of something that’s not the here and now._

“Like what?”

 _Go through your last patrol. Every minute_.

“Well, that’s like super boring land.”

_That’s the point._

Young!Buffy let out a huffing breath. “Okay, fine.”

As her younger self slipped into quiet memories of cemeteries at night, Buffy felt the glass pane between them tilt open again and she slid to the forefront with a smile, opening her eyes.

“Hi, Wil.”

Willow squealed in delight. “It’s you! I mean, you you.”

Buffy laughed. “God, I’ve missed you, Willow.”

That wiped the smile from her young friend’s face. “You… you miss me? Why– what happens to me?”

“Oh, uhm. Nothing exactly. We’re just not very close anymore.”

“Oh.” Willow looked incredibly sad at that. “But we were going to be those little old ladies with the matching canes and the cold feet and the millions of cats that we let loose to meow on the neighborhood. I can’t be a crazy cat lady alone! That’s…. that’s just crazy!”

Buffy looked at her with gentle humor.  _God, this Buffy jokes about growing old? I don't even remember the idea._  “Don’t worry, I think you and this Buffy will be crazy cat ladies together. Cold feet and all.”

“You think so?”

“I really, really do.” Buffy paused. “Can you do something for me, Willow?”

“Sure!”

“Find a teacher.”

“Huh?”

“You’re a really powerful witch – or you will be. Only, you kind of go a little wild.”

Willow frowned at her. “Define ‘a little wild.’ Are we talking ‘Buffy is being uber with the inappropriate on Xander at The Bronze’ wild or ‘Hey, the mayor just turned into a giant gross snake’ wild?”

“More mayor-y.”

“Yikes.”

“Major yikes.” Buffy sighed. “Ask Giles to call up some of his friends from his coven in England, okay? Please?”

Willow nodded, looking a little awed, a little unsure. “Okay.”

“Thank you.”

Willow hopped up from bed. “Let’s go make with some super sugary coffee times. My treat. I want to hear about everything.” Her eyes glinted mischievously. “I hear there’s a Spike-shaped guy involved somewhere.”

Buffy grinned. “A very Spike-shaped guy.”

“Yum.”

Buffy laughed, a sudden realization reaching her. “Oh. Spike hasn’t kidnapped you in this present, I guess. Has he even threatened to kill you?”

Willow giggled. “Only once. I might’ve told him his purple shirt was cute.”

“Did he glare at you? Please tell me did.”

“Oh my god, I got like the high beam Spike vampirey glare.”

Buffy smiled warmly, standing in her borrowed body. “I want details. Let me get this Buffy dressed and then it is most definitely coffee time.”

 

***

 

Buffy was walking along the quad heading away from the dorm, young!Buffy in the driver’s seat once more.

“You’re sure he’ll show up soon?”

_Oh, yeah. Spike couldn’t resist showing off. Angelus is just an obsessive, arrogant prick._

‘We’ve been walking back and forth for like thirty minutes.”

_Suck it up._

“Hey! That’s not what I was saying.”

Buffy mentally grinned.  _I know._

“Oh, geez. Did you pick that snark up from Spike or something?”

Buffy regarded that solemnly.  _Maybe,_  she decided finally. She paused.  _I’ve been wondering, actually… Did Spike ever tell you how Dru got Angelus to leave? In my time, he was hellbent on ending me for making him feel human._

Young!Buffy shrugged. “Spike never said in much detail, but…” she hesitated. “You know how he is – if it’s something that really hurts, he won’t say it.”

Buffy regarded her other self thoughtfully.  _I do know that. Only, I definitely wouldn’t have when I was your age._

“Well, you didn’t live with the guy for over a year.”

_Touché._

Young!Buffy sighed. “I think… Spike mentioned once – when he was like five sheets to the wind, mind you – that his ho of a girlfriend told Angelus that if he stayed, he’d be lost forever, but if he went away he’d be able to regain himself and come back for revenge.”

_That sounds pretty tame, actually._

Young!Buffy winced. “I left out pretty much all of the super grossness. And I think Spike left out even more. I’m pretty sure bathing in the blood of Nigerian princesses was involved, though.”

Buffy felt her (metaphorical) lips curl downward in disgust. _Let me guess? Super young princesses?_

“Yeah.” Young!Buffy paused. “You said Spike died saving Angel. How did that happen if he’s in hell?”

 _Apparently, even hell didn’t want to keep him forever,_  Buffy said dryly, then sighed.  _He came back. Made a wreck of my heart, and then left for LA. He… well, he worked really hard to redeem himself there. I was really proud of him for it, honestly. And then he got in over his head with a demonic law firm, which ended with a crazy big battle. Like, dragon-worthy big. Where he died before I could stake him for not telling me Spike was with him._

“But they hate each other, don’t they?”

 _Historically,_  Buffy said softly.  _But by that time, it didn’t matter._

Young!Buffy stood quietly for a moment, thoughtful. “Did he ever even know you loved him?”

_I told him. But I told him too late. When he was dying the first time. I think it made things worse._

Before young!Buffy could reply to that, there was a dark whistle,like demented birdsong, behind them, which both Buffys recognized with chilling certainty. Young!Buffy spun them around, and there was Angelus, standing in the middle of the lawn.

He looked as Buffy remembered him, which wasn’t really a surprise, considering he was a vampire (and a heinously fashion stuck one at that). His dark hair was combed up and gelled, and he was wearing some kind of dark patterned button-up that gleamed slightly red in the sun.

“Beautiful day, don’t you think?” Angelus drawled easily. “So bright and sunny and… non-fatal.”

He had clearly been going for shock and awe, and an annoyed expression drew down his face when young!Buffy just raised her brow at him.

“Congratulations,” she told him cheerily. “You can now do the one thing that makes you remotely human. Must be a dream come true.”

Angelus’s face turned thunderous. “I don’t think you understand how this works,” he said icily, sliding nearer with a dark stare. “The only bit of human in this situation is you. And you won’t be that for long.” He paused. “Actually, long is kind of what I’m in to. But I guarantee you won’t want it to be.”

Young!Buffy fanned a hand in front of her face dramatically. “Yawn. God, you would think the whole ‘evil again’ situation would make someone less boring, but I guess there are just some things even soullessness can’t fix.”

Buffy laughed inside their head.

Young!Buffy drew up a brow. “You want first dibs?” she asked herself.

_That would be so kind._

Young!Buffy shrugged. “Sounds like you have a lot more baggage with him than I do.”

_You have no idea._

And then Angelus was there, swinging, snarling at her face. Young!Buffy quickly thought of something quiet and dull, and Buffy slid into control in time to block the blow with a measure of control she could tell rocked him.

“It’s been a few years,” she told him calmly, responding with a steep jab to his ribs that sent him stumbling back. “Believe me, you were better off picking a fight two years ago. Too bad.”

Angelus just laughed at her, flashing his ringed finger. “Guess you don’t know what this is then, Buff?”

“Oh, I know. I just don’t care.” She flung herself forward, kicking sideways to catch him with a stinging blow to the jaw.

Young!Buffy made a small noise inside their head.  _Whoa. That’s an awesome move. Can you teach me?_

Buffy paused, her muscles locking up, allowing Angelus to sucker punch her in the collarbone. She hit the ground with a pained grunt. “Yes. But go back to deep thoughts now. It’s too hard this way.”

_Sorry._

Her muscles returned and Buffy pulled herself up off the ground, smiling. “Hope you enjoyed that, Angel honey. It’s the last one free one you’re getting.” She turned to him and let loose a dramatic three move combo – kick, punch, jab – that she’d learned in the last ten years, and knocked her once-lover to the ground. She tried to land a blow on his face as he lay prone, but he rolled out of the way before she could catch him.

Angelus chuckled lowly, although she could see the surprise in his eyes. “Don’t think you’re quite getting with the program here, lover. You can’t hurt me.”

Buffy shrugged. “Oh, I can hurt you plenty. Even with that ring, I’m sure a broken jaw stings for a moment or two.”

Angelus gave her a dark, taunting smile. “Always knew you had some kink underneath that… bland exterior. C’mon then, hurt me good, Buff.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Tag, you’re it,” she told her younger self, and slid into the back of her young body’s mind.

Young!Buffy rose with a perky smile. “Oh, Angel, you know just the thing to say.” She flipped forward to clip him right in the bottom of the jaw. There was a loud cracking sound.

_Nice._

“Thanks!”

The two Buffys traded blows with Angelus across the quad, Angelus wincing when Buffy would momentarily break his shin or his nose or his rib. But that’s all it ever was: temporary.

“We can’t do this forever,” young!Buffy panted as Angelus landed a ringing blow on the side of her head. “There may be two of us, but there’s only one body.”

Angelus gave her a condescending smile. “That’s right, Buff. There  _will_  only be one body when I’m done.”

“Ugh. So not talking to you.”

 _Soon_ , Buffy whispered, watching with rapt attention.  _He’s getting bored. On my call, switch, okay?_

“Okay.”

And then there it was: Angelus, in his careless arrogance, started a swing that was just that much too wide.

_Switch!_

Buffy slid forward as her young self dropped back and caught Angelus’s arm, twisting it roughly behind him.

“Sorry, baby, the sun’s not a good look on you,” she told him, and tugged the ring off.

Angelus gasped. “You stupid cow!” He broke free from her with a roar and ran, smoking, into the open sewer grate nearby.

Buffy blinked after him. “Did he just call me a cow?”

Young!Buffy snorted, pulling back into control. “Seems like.”

_Asshole._

Young!Buffy stared down at the ring in her hand. “Huh. Pretty tiny for being so damage-free making.”

_And pretty ugly, to be honest._

“Yep.” Young!Buffy glanced around, noting the small spot of attention her fight had drawn. “Acrobatics training,” she called to the gawkers, smiling and hurrying along the quad again, ring safely in her pocket. She drew out a long, noisy breath “So… are you sure you didn’t come back just because you like beating on baddies?”

 _One family in particular, apparently._  Buffy mentally shrugged.  _You could probably have taken Angelus without me. I really came today to make sure the ring ended up safe._

Young!Buffy patted her pocket uneasily. “This whole bit of bling seems super not safe. Impervious evil vampire? Think we’ve proven that should go into the ‘no’ category.”

_It's good when it's on the right vampire._

Young!Buffy frowned, her eyes widening after a moment. “Oh, please don't tell me you mean who I think you mean.”

_Sorry. He's going to need it next year, unless you want to have to kill a human. Or something that’s human part of the time._

"What?" young!Buffy squeaked.

 _Hell god gets trapped with a human alter ego and almost ends the world trying to get home. It’s fun. Death number two fun, actually._ Buffy paused.  _It’s the big one. The big thing we have to not let happen, okay?_

“Me dying?”

_And what comes after._

Young!Buffy sighed. “Well, I’m all for the non-dying Buffy plan. Sign me right up.”

Buffy smiled a bit sadly.  _I hope you always feel that way._

 

***

 

 Buffy knocked on her Watcher’s door forty minutes later, and he opened it with a relieved smile.

“Buffy.”

“Hi Giles, it’s me.”

She knew he understood immediately. His eyes crinkled in a warm smile. “Welcome back, Buffy.”

They stepped inside, and Buffy smiled at the crew gathered in the living room: the whole of the Scooby gang as they existed now. Willow and Xander and Oz and… Her heart thumped wildly.  _Spike._ He was lounging easily on the couch, feet thrown up on the coffee table – more at ease in Giles’s home in this time than he’d ever been in hers. She glanced by the doorway and saw a patterned afghan discarded there, slightly singed. It was neatly folded, as if it belonged. Her chest warmed.

Buffy couldn’t help it; she strode to the couch and just stared at him, drinking in all the angles of his face, the gentle slope of his curved, lean form, the familiar leather of his duster.

Spike blinked up at her, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Can I help you, Slayer?”

“Hi, Spike.”

He frowned at her, at the low, reverberating tones of her voice. Then his eyes widened and he sat up abruptly. “Oh, bloody hell.” He glanced at Giles accusingly. “It’s her, innit? The other Buffy.”

Buffy raised a brow as Giles nodded. “You could just ask me, you know.”

He glared at her. “Didn’t wanna.”

Buffy knew she didn’t hide her hurt well. It was one thing to remember Spike’s dislike, it was something else entirely to live it. God, she thought, maybe young!Buffy was right. This Spike really didn’t feel anything for her. Not in the way she wanted. She stepped back abruptly, away from the couch.  _Maybe it wasn’t Buffy that I needed to worry about, after all_. She looked away, swallowing hard, hating that her eyes were growing wet. Maybe without the hatred and the chip, this Spike would be a different vampire entirely. Had he really needed to become entirely broken to love her? What did that say about her?

“Tag,” she whispered, sinking back abruptly in her mind, before a body could betray her further.

Young!Buffy surged forward. She immediately glared at Spike, hands on her hips. “No need to be such a jerk!”

Spike stood and gave her an equally black look. “That's not something you just spring on a bloke, Slayer!”

“Well, it’s not like I get a ton of warning, either, Spike!”

Giles cleared his throat loudly, looked resigned, as if this was an everyday occurrence. “If I may, I believe we have more important business than fisticuffs.”

Young!Buffy gave Spike one last disgusted look, then collapsed into the only free chair.

Xander was watching her with bright curiosity. “So there’s really a second Buffy in there? It’s like double Buffy day?”

“She’s here, Xan.” Young!Buffy frowned, feeling Buffy’s intense turmoil. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

Buffy gave a dark mental laugh.  _Just business as usual. The one thing I really came back for may be the only thing I don’t end up with_.

Young!Buffy bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”

Buffy shrank back further, wanting nothing more in that moment than the comfort of a bottle of whisky, burning nectar to drown all of her thoughts into amber oblivion.  _It’s just how life’s been. Don’t worry about it._

Young!Buffy wrinkled her nose. “Eww, you drink whisky?”

Spike looked over with sudden interest. “Does she now?”

Young!Buffy scowled at him. “She drinks because of you, idiot.”

Spike’s face stilled, and he watched her with a slight furrow to his brow. After a moment, he pursed his lips and looked away, saying nothing at all.

Xander watched the exchange with bafflement. “She drinks because of Spike? What did he do?”

Giles sighed. “Can this discussion not wait?”

Young!Buffy shrugged. “It’s a short story. Her Spike died.”

Willow blinked. “Well, she also–”

“ _He died_ , Willow,” young!Buffy said firmly, giving her friend a stern look.

“It’s a good reason to drink,” Oz put in mildly.

Spike blinked at the man. “Didn’t realize you liked me that much, Wolf.”

Oz shrugged easily. “You’re a comrade. Isn’t that what you do when comrades die?”

Spike just looked at him, and then nodded once, briefly, his blue eyes turmoiled. “Guess so.”

“Excellent,” Giles said sternly. “Now that we’ve gotten that bit of twaddle out of the way, can we please move on to the Gem of Amara?”

Young!Buffy pulled out the ring and set it easily on the middle of the coffee table. “One Gem, full of gem-yness. Side of Amara.” She paused. “Might be traces of Angel in there, too. Think he left a few skin cells behind.”

Spike gave her a sharp look, his eyes growing flat. “The wanker’s not dust?”

“Sadly, no. Kinda had my hands full just getting the Gem.”

“Well, bloody fuck, Slayer.”

Young!Buffy gave him a hard look. “Sorry I only managed to disable the impervious evil vampire.”

Giles sighed. “ _Children_. If you please.” He gave young!Buffy a speculative look. “Since the other Buffy is visiting today, I assume she had some thoughts about what should be done with this rather dangerous relic?”

Young!Buffy nodded. “Yeah. We’re supposed to hold on to it. I guess there’s something really bad coming next year. Death-y Buffy bad.”

Willow’s eyes widened. “You  _die_?”

“That’s what she’s trying to prevent, Wils.”

Giles tapped the edge of his glasses thoughtfully. “We shall need somewhere incredibly… discreet to place the Gem for now, so that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Again.”

Willow giggled. “1! Ooh, no, 2! 98 degrees!” The others all stared at her, and Willow gave them a surprised and somewhat exasperated look. “What? He said ‘discreet.’ You know, like ‘discrete numbers’? Get it?”

Xander shook his head. “Geez, Wil. That’s out there, even for you.”

Willow pouted. “I thought it was a good one.”

Spike rolled his eyes and glanced out the window at the darkening sky. “Well, kiddies, as much as I’d love to stick around for this sickeningly dull conversation, I have a grandsire to beat to a dusty pulp.”

Young!Buffy threw him a surprised look. “You aren’t serious.”

Spike glared at her. “Well, you didn’t do it, Slayer, so I bloody well will.” His lip curled up in a silent snarl. “Owe him some pain, anyhow.”

Not waiting for a further reply, Spike strode to the door, and was gone.

Panic gripped Buffy’s non-existent throat.  _No, wait!_  Even if Spike didn't care at all... would never care, she couldn't go one more day without at least saying it. Saying the words she’d so desperately wished she’d once told him, before it was too late.

Young!Buffy caught her thoughts and abruptly followed the vampire out the door.

"Spike, wait!"

Spike turned with a growl from where he stood halfway across the courtyard. "What!"

Young!Buffy gave him a look. "She wants to talk to you."

"Well, I don't bloody well want to talk to her."

"Just shut up, okay? From what I've gotten from her, your life sucked a lot more last time, so you can at least pretend to be some tiny shred of grateful."

Spike snorted. "Worse than being a sodding white hat? Don't think there's much worse than that. Unless, of course, she's referring to the fact that I went barmy enough  _to fall in love with you_."

Young!Buffy hauled off and slugged him, her fist connecting with his nose with a satisfying thump.

"Oh, real nice!" Spike glared at her, clutching his nose tenderly.

"I'll hit you somewhere softer next time if you don't cut the crap."

The vampire sighed heavily and moved his nose experimentally, looking satisfied when it didn't seem to be broken. "Fine, Slayer." He motioned carelessly, lighting a cigarette. "Send her out."

"You're on," young!Buffy murmured, fading into the background.

Buffy rose to the front, steeling every inch of her that could feel. There were too many inches. "I'm sorry," she said softly, staring into Spike's wary blue eyes.

Spike blinked at her, clearly taken aback. "What?"

"I'm sorry," Buffy repeated steadily, clenching her fists to keep from approaching the vampire, to keep from breathing in the smell of nicotine and leather and must that haunted her still, decades later. "For everything. I know it's not this you – that the you I need to apologize to is gone – but..." she swallowed. "You're the only version left. And I know you don't care about me. I get it. But... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Spike." Despite her best efforts, traitorous tears welled in the edges of her eyes. God, how many years had it been since she'd found the energy to cry over him?

"I broke you. I beat you. I took everything you would give me. Which," Buffy laughed darkly, "because it's you, was pretty much everything you had. And... I waited until you were fucking  _dying_  to give you the real crumb you'd long since stopped hoping for." Tears flooded down her cheeks, and she ignored them, blinking rapidly at the astonished vampire. "I'm so, so sorry, Spike."

Buffy didn't really expect him to say anything at all to her confession; she really thought he'd turn on his heel as soon as her words were done. So she was taken aback when he strode up to her instead, face fierce and nostrils flared. And she was doubly shocked when he grabbed her roughly by her upper arms and smashed his mouth against hers. Her mind went into full-tilt spin mode – entirely useless – but her subconscious remembered the way, remembered the exact taste of him on her lips and the feel of his cool skin, and she responded instantly, hungrily, demanding his tongue and every inch of his mouth that her own could reach. And – oh god – it had been so long since she'd felt that kind of heat. That kind of want that immediately made her tremble and shake and  _need_.

The unexpected circumstance threw young!Buffy out of her meditation and she surged forward, entirely shell-shocked, mid-kiss.

Spike growled as Buffy’s lips stilled and he nipped at her mouth fiercely, demanding a reply. Young!Buffy moaned, giving him her suddenly fervent answer, and Spike’s hold on her arms tightened even further. Buffy realized then that Spike knew young!Buffy had returned.  _And he was still kissing her._

After a long moment, the vampire broke away with a shuddering gasp, and the two of them stood an inch apart, staring at one another.

"Spike?" Young!Buffy's voice was tremulous.

The vampire's eyes were dark and turmoiled, his face looking as shocked as young!Buffy felt. "Fuck," was all he said, before he turned and strode away, as quickly as his vampiric speed would take him.

 

***

 

Buffy took her younger self’s body back inside, as young!Buffy was too preoccupied with a single repeating question –  _What just happened?!_  (accompanied by an answering boatload of Eddie-related guilt) – to usefully navigate her legs.

Giles looked at her speculatively, the Scoobies pausing in conversation. “Buffy?”

“It’s me. I mean, the ghost me. Your Buffy is, uhm, busy thinking.”

Giles nodded stoically at that. “Indeed.” He glanced at the others. “We’ve come to the conclusion that the safest spot for storage of the Gem would be in a small pocket dimension.”

Buffy blinked. “A pocket dimension.”

Willow nodded eagerly. “Yeah. I’ve been reading up on them. We can go in and out, but no one else can really find them unless they know what they’re looking for!”

Buffy smiled warmly. “It’s brilliant, Wils.”

Xander nodded, looking bemused but cheerful. “Yeah, totally. I have no real idea what you’re talking about, but… go Willow!”

“It takes a special kind of person to follow the Willow-brain,” Oz said wisely.

Willow grinned. “I know. Isn’t it great?”

Giles shook his head at the antics, rising to join Buffy at the back of the couch. “I wonder, my dear, if you might have some time for a small interview of sorts…”

“Huh?”

Her Watcher smiled, pulling out several sheets of paper, all covered in his British scribble. “I have a few inquiries about your time travelling.”

 _He’s been sitting on those questions for almost a year_ , young!Buffy warned her, rising from her stupor.

“Oh geez, Giles. I’m not any better at research now than I was then.” Buffy paused. “And even the PTB admitted this was a bit… out there, even for them. Cordelia didn’t say it outright, but I got the distinct impression that there was the possibility that this wouldn’t work at all. That poof! would go the Buffy.”

"Ah... Cordelia?"

"Long story."

Giles nodded stoically. “I see. Well, I’d still like to, ah, discuss it… if you don’t mind. I also have some thoughts about your connection to our Buffy that might be useful to explore."

Buffy shrugged. “As long as you don’t share this with the Council, I guess I don’t mind. I really don’t like them sticking their noses into my business.”

Giles blinked at her in surprise. “That won’t be a problem, Buffy.”

 _We’re really not on speaking terms with the Council,_  young!Buffy informed her.  _Not since the stupid Crucio thing._

Buffy nodded. “That makes sense.” She smiled at Giles’s expectant expression. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Her Watcher’s beaming smile could have lit up the entire room.

 

***

 

Young!Buffy crawled quietly into her dorm bed after patrol that night, trying very hard to not wake the sleeping Willow. After settling herself down successfully, she laid silently for a long minute, clearly wanting to say something but not sure how to bring herself to. Buffy just waited.

“That was better than in the memories,” young!Buffy whispered finally, uneasily, her thoughts swirling with the sensation of Spike’s lips on hers.

Buffy smiled gently, hope growing in her fast and fierce and hurting.  _It always is._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With references from S4.3 "The Harsh Light of Day"


	6. Day 5: Send the Hell God Packing

Day five entered with a sense of steely determination. So caught up in what might be to come and how much she might need to get caught up on from the past almost year and a half, Buffy only remembered her manners at the last second.  _Good morning, Buffy._

Young!Buffy jolted fully awake with a relieved sigh. “Oh thank god. You’re here.” Her voice sounded older, wearied.

_I told you I would be._

Young!Buffy gave the impression of a shrug. “I know. But things happen.”

Buffy paused. Oh boy. She knew that tone. How incredibly, horribly well she knew that tone. It was  _her_  tone. Anxiety filled her being.  _What happened? Did something go wrong with the Initiative? I tried to give you as much information as I could…_

A pause, then a flat, “No, the Initiative is ended. Franken-gross is kaput. History.”

 _Oh, good._  Buffy hesitated.  _And Spike? He didn’t get chipped? He’s okay?_

“Nope. And yep, he’s fine.” Young!Buffy’s dark mood shifted abruptly to her more familiar light humor, although even this felt more sardonic than usual. “Although you’ll never guess who did get chipped.”

_Who?_

Young!Buffy just smiled, very purposefully shielding her thoughts. “You’ll see.”

Her younger self's good mood faded and she sat up in bed. They were back on Revello Drive in Buffy’s childhood room, although young!Buffy had altered it significantly from the space Buffy had seen four years ago. The frills of the young girl were gone, replaced by neutral tones and a much more sensible closet. This Buffy even had several books on her nightstand that looked (most surprisingly) well-read.

_You read?_

“Eddie was big on books.”

Buffy didn’t miss the past tense, or the jolt of deep and dark sadness from her other self.  _I’m sorry._

“He’s dead.”

Buffy’s non-existent heart skipped a beat.  _What happened?_

“Things didn’t go quite as smoothly with Mr. Patchwork as we hoped.”

_I thought you said nothing went wrong._

Her younger self gave a self-mocking laugh. “Well, the world didn’t end. Sunnydale is still standing and oblivious to bumpies. That’s our definition of ‘not wrong’, isn’t it?”

 _What happened?_  Buffy asked again, more firmly.

Young!Buffy didn’t answer in words. Instead, a memory of Eddie brightened their shared space. Eddie staring at her with an empty, shocked gaze as Adam’s skewer pierced his heart. She heard the thump of his body sliding to the ground. Saw the long drips of his blood fall from Adam’s borrowed polgara appendage.

“He was exactly where he had no business being,” young!Buffy said softly. “I told him… about slaying, and the Initiative. I shouldn’t have.”

 _It’s never easy,_  Buffy said, equally as quietly, a long line of dead Potentials filling her thoughts.  _Sometimes you… you make a wrong choice. And sometimes people die._ She paused, sighing.  _And sometimes they die even when you make a right one._

“Yeah. I guess so.” Young!Buffy frowned. “Who are they? The girls you’re thinking about?”

_Girls that died because of me. Girls I led into danger because I thought I was doing right._

“Were you?”

Buffy gave a hoarse kind of helpless laugh inside their shared mental space.  _Maybe._   _Maybe not. After all this time… I’m still not sure._

“Oh.” Young!Buffy sighed. “Does it ever get easier?”

Buffy was quiet for a long moment, listening to her other self’s subdued emotions, to her intense fatigue and her dogged determination. It made Buffy incredibly angry, incredibly frustrated, incredibly sad. After everything – after one less death and several fewer heartaches and much better friends – here it was, still. Her deathwish had arrived right on time, like an unwelcome, grievous houseguest. Fuck.

Buffy frowned. Sure, dead or gone boyfriends were disheartening, and Glory was always bound to be the cherry on top of any terrifically terrible day or year, but it didn’t seem like enough to create her younger self’s current disillusionment. So what had happened in the past year?

And then it hit her, with all the obvious force of an oncoming semi.  _Mom still died, didn’t she?_

“It was almost worse that I knew,” young!Buffy whispered. “No, scratch that. I know it was. Most of the hospital staff thought I was insane because I basically screamed at them until they admitted her. And then it was over so fast. She was gone before they even got her into the operating room.” Her young self’s shoulders slumped. “Spike has been even worse off, I think. Blames himself.”

 _He would._  Buffy gave her other self a tight mental hug.  _Spike’s not a surgeon. There was only so much he could do._

“It doesn’t stop him from thinking he could have done more.” A beat. “It doesn’t stop me from thinking it either.”

_You’re blaming Spike?_

“What? No, I mean me. I should have been able to do more.” She gave an angry bark of laughter. “God, you only gave me more than a year’s warning. All for what? So I could still fail her miserably?”

Buffy sighed.  _Do you want to hear another Willow and Tara theory? Or, really, it’s a Giles theory, I guess._

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

 _Magic always has a price._  And god, how intimately Buffy knew that in her trainwrecked present. _It was mentioned once – when they didn’t think I was listening – that maybe the price for Dawn’s existence, a new life, was the loss of another._

“Mom.”

_Yeah._

“That’s… that’s just…”

_Sucktastic?_

“Something like that.” Young!Buffy brooded over that for a moment. “Do you think it’s true?”

_I don’t know. Does it make it better to think so?_

“And worse.”

_I understand._

Young!Buffy frowned and stood. “So today’s really the day, isn’t it?”

_I hope so. You guys came up with a plan?_

“We did. I have no idea if it’s terrible or not, but it’s a plan.”

 _That sounds about par for the course._   _Let’s head to the others, and you can fill me in on the way._  Buffy paused.  _Are you ready?_

“Does it matter?”

_Always._

“I have no idea.”

_That’s okay. You know why?_

“Why?”

_Because I am._

 

***

 

Buffy had intended to come back on the day that Spike was captured by Glory – the day of their first kiss, after he so valiantly withstood hell god torture for her. Before Tara got brain sucked, before Dawnie got kidnapped, before it all fell apart. At worst, she hoped her younger self learning to trust Spike implicitly with regard to Dawn’s life would convince her to give him the much-needed Gem of Amara. She knew a mostly impervious Spike was likely to take matters into his own hands then, and seek the hell god out. In her now defunct present, Buffy had hoped that Spike could give Glory enough of a run for her money that he might be able to whale on her until she crumpled back into Ben. Until she was human, and the soulless vampire could tear out Ben’s throat. It was a feat that was do-able even if she couldn’t stop him from being chipped. After all, what was a second of pain while wearing the Gem of Amara?

She wasn’t sure what Spike killing might mean to her younger self, but it was the unfortunate risk she had decided to take (pending success with all of her other, equally risky, endeavors). Even after so long, Buffy wasn’t immune to the idea of The Mission. And The Mission was to never lose herself that way again. To never let her shitty present come to pass. In the end, she reasoned that whatever issues Spike killing Glory caused couldn’t really be worse than the ones her resurrection had created.

Of course, things were different now. That much was evidenced by the fact that she didn’t exactly just set off for the Magic Box. Instead, she found Spike waiting for her by the entryway, anxiously pacing. He looked up as she came down the stairs, a stern question in his eyes, his gorgeous curls tousled and loose. It sent a sharp pang through her, her memory brimming with all the other times they’d been in the exact same placement. It was the story of her life, maybe; Spike waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. And, as she had with young!Buffy’s tone, Buffy recognized Spike’s expression. It was warm, hopeful, relieved.

“You’re here, yeah?”

Buffy nodded, her young self content to sink back in their shared mind. “Hi, Spike. Yes, I’m here.” She smiled at him curiously. “Do you still live here?”

He shrugged, giving her a strange look. “Well, yeah. ‘Course.”

Buffy reached the bottom of the staircase and stood less than a foot away from him, drinking in his face, so eternally beautiful and strong and wild. “Of course?” she repeated, knowing her expression was a bit sad, a bit nostalgic. “Not in my time.”

Spike tilted his head slightly, evaluating. “It's not your time anymore.”

“And let’s all cheer loudly for that fact.” Buffy swallowed roughly, losing herself in the amused depths of her vampire’s remarkably blue eyes. She could sense her young self’s twinned feelings of unabashed want at his presence. Well, that was new. And promising. “Can I kiss you?”

Spike smirked at her, tongue curling behind his teeth. And, oh god, how she’d missed that familiar leer. “Don’t know, pet. My Buffy might have words with you for it.”

“Because you’re hers?”

A shadow crossed his face. “Because I‘m not.”

Buffy frowned. Her younger self’s desire for the vampire in front of her was unmistakable, as was the fact that it was desire for him  _again_. “You still aren’t dating him?”

Young!Buffy sighed.  _It’s complicated, okay?_

“It’s not that complicated.”

 _Pushy pushy._  Her young self gave the impression of an indulgent smile.  _Kiss him if you like, though._

“You seem awfully okay with it for being non-dating girl.”

_It’ll drive him wild._

“Ah huh. I see your dark streak has kicked in ahead of the curve.”

_Huh?_

“Never mind.” Buffy stepped closer to the curious vampire, who was regarding her with a raised brow. “I have permission,” she told him softly, with just the right edge of want that she knew would make his pants tighter.

“Well then,” Spike murmured, leaning toward her, lust darkening his gaze.

Buffy paused, her breath catching at the close prickle of his presence, suffocating her in everything that was just so undeniably  _him_. “Do you… it’s okay if you don’t, but... do you–”

“I love you, Buffy,” Spike growled at her, his face just a hairsbreadth from hers.

Everything in her melted in relief at the long lost words, an aching balm for her much-battered heart. “Oh thank god.”

Spike smiled wryly. “First time I’ve gotten that response.”

Alarm rose in Buffy, making her younger self sigh.  _I don’t ridicule him for it, if that’s what you’re thinking._

“I don’t know what to think. Do you like him?”

 _I’ve_ liked _him for a long time_ , young!Buffy said easily.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

Spike chuckled lowly, the sound reverberating deliciously in her ears. “Glad to know even you have to argue with yourself, pet.”

“Have to be consistent, apparently,” Buffy said dryly.

 _That’s me. Consistent girl._  Young!Buffy hesitated, then said very quietly, _I like him._ There was an irritated pause.  _You just wanted to make me say it, didn’t you? You knew I liked him._

“I knew. What I don’t know is why you’re not with him.”

 _Well, I mean… I have been, uhm, with him_. A flash of naked Spike images flickered through their shared space, incredibly reminiscent of Buffy’s own memories, except this was in a place that looked like the house’s basement, the tinge of drying tears and sorrow heavy within the lovers as they gasped silently against one another. It was right after her mother’s funeral, Buffy gathered.

“That’s just sex. And I swear to god, if you use him like I did, I will find some way to smack a whole boatload of sense into you.”

Spike drew in a sharp breath. “Maybe I should toddle off for a minute, yeah? Let you two have it out.”

Buffy grabbed the lapel of his duster in both hands, looking at him fiercely. “No.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “One of you is going to tell me what’s going on. I’ve spent two fucking decades wanting you, Spike. I’m not letting any version of me make my mistakes over again.”

Spike’s face gentled into something dangerously close to awe, close to gratitude. “Buffy…”

Buffy gave him a sad, humorless smile. “I want to tell you… I want to tell you how much you mean to me. It claws at my throat every time I see you. But, like you said, it’s not my time anymore. They’re not my words to say.” She glared internally at her other self. “But I’m sure as fuck not letting them stay unsaid forever.”

Young!Buffy didn’t say anything at all to that, but a collection of memories swirled around their shared mind space, all tinged with numbness, with quiet, with cold.

“Oh,” Buffy said softly. “I see. You think you can’t. Or that you shouldn’t.”

 _Doesn’t seem like it ever worked out very well for you_ , young!Buffy whispered.

“Well, I was an idiot.” Buffy thought back to her own time. “Did you take a vision quest, like I did?”

 _Giles mentioned it, but we’ve been a little busy getting ready for today._  Young!Buffy paused.  _You took one? What did you learn?_

“That I’m full of love.” Buffy took a deep breath, trying to rein in the remembered pain of the vision guide’s other words. “Other things too, but… mostly that.”

_I can feel that. Something is dark and hurty. What is it?_

“Nothing that matters anymore.” Buffy bit her lip in thought. The other words had been her deathwish incarnate, the culmination of everything she had secretly needed and had been desperately afraid to even recognize. Everything she couldn’t let happen again. And how fucking ironic was that, that Buffy the immortal Slayer – who, less than a week ago would have given anything to die – now needed to give her young self a way to stay alive.

“Listen, do you trust me?”

_Yes._

“Then trust me when I tell you,” Buffy’s eyes flickered up to Spike, who was watching her with rapt, fearful attention, “that, in my time, when I was with Spike after my resurrection, it was the only time I didn’t want to be back in the ground. But I did it wrong. I took only his body, and not the rest of him. It’s the rest of him that you need.”

There was a long silence from her younger self, then,  _Ugh, you’re going to make his ego so insufferably large._

Buffy laughed, and pulled a gobsmacked Spike closer, her arms wrapping around his neck. “Kiss me,” she commanded softly.

Spike drew in a sharp, unneeded breath. “Christ, having two Buffys is enough to make a bloke barmy.”

“Pretty sure that’s what you said you’d need to be to fall in love with me.”

He chuckled at that. “Right fitting then, I s’pose.” And then he captured her mouth in his with a kind of intensity that was so purely Spike it made all of her muscles feel weak. It made her feel as if she might burn up so hot and fast that only the barest ash would remain. As if the last two decades of her life were nothing but a horrible, hazy dream.

Spike pulled her more tightly against his chest as Buffy lost control of her knees, his lips and tongue and teeth marking her mouth and sliding to the edge of her jaw to ply her with heavy kisses before returning to her needy, begging lips.

Buffy was utterly dizzy and giddy and relieved. This was her Spike. Oh, this wasn’t her souled Spike, not the Spike who was gentled and guilt-ridden and outright redemptive. But this was her Spike. The vampire who loved her.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Buffy murmured when at last they broke apart, panting.

Spike tenderly brushed a lock of hair away from her borrowed face. “I'm sorry, luv.”

“Don’t be.” Buffy took a deep breath, feeling her younger self’s anxiety rising. “Let’s go. We have a hell god to send packing.”

 

***

 

Buffy stayed in the back of her shared mind on the way to the Magic Box in the pre-dawn morning, content to let her younger self and Spike relay updates and plans. Privately, she asked her other self for memories. There was so much she’d never gotten to experience in her time, so many moments between her and the blond vampire that had just simply never gotten to be.

She received glimpses of Spike racing a young Dawn around in his wheelchair through the house, laughing and teasing the littlest Summers when he thought no one was looking. She experienced the unexpected feeling of camaraderie that bloomed when Spike helped young!Buffy take down the hell hounds at prom. She saw a dozen different Scooby meetings flit by, Spike acting put-upon and unwilling, but still helping. Young!Buffy had a favorite memory of the blond vampire passed out on Giles’s couch, surrounded by books, as he tried to help them track down a particularly nasty demon.

Buffy saw the argument that ended with Spike exploding, “Because I’m in love with you, you infuriating bint!” and she saw the careful way they avoided each other for a week afterward. She felt Spike holding young!Buffy’s shaking hand in his steady one as they sat, silent, in the hospital waiting room. She watched Spike wrapping her sobbing young self in his arms as she collapsed, months later, on that same hospital floor, his body feeling like her only anchor to earth. She saw all the little pieces of their life that young!Buffy could think of, a relationship built initially on need and shared pain, and then grudging respect and admiration.

 _And you’re telling me you don’t love him?_ Buffy said when the torrent ended, her existence thick with regret and awe and confusion.

“I never said that,” her young self replied softly. More loudly, she said, “Dawn’s at the Magic Box, in case you were wondering.”

_I was. I’m surprised you’ve let her out of your sight._

“I didn’t want to, but Tara and Willow needed her for the spell preparation earlier this morning and Spike insisted I needed to sleep in a bit more. They’re doing something to make dimensional barriers stronger. Like opposite of key-ness.”

_Lock-yness?_

“Yeah.”

Spike gave her young self an amused look. “Don’t know what all you chits are saying, but I‘m guessing it’s only half in English.”

“Oh, shut up, Spike,” young!Buffy said, but her tone was warm. There was a brief hesitation, and then she reached out and took the vampire’s hand.

Spike nearly stumbled on the sidewalk, glancing at her with no small amount of shock. Young!Buffy just gave him a shy smile, and they kept walking, Spike's hand firmly returning her hold.

After a minute, Spike cleared his throat softly and said a bit shakily, “Witches have the ring, too. Putting some kind of glamour on it so Hell Bitch can’t see.”

They reached the Magic Box a few minutes later and young!Buffy stopped just before opening the door, earning a raised brow from Spike as he glanced at the pinkening horizon.

“She doesn’t know,” young!Buffy said by way of explanation, “about our chipped addition.”

Spike let out a noisy breath. “Well, won’t this be incredibly awkward fun for the whole bloody family.”

_Huh? What are you guys talking about?_

Young!Buffy just entered the shop without replying, and Buffy curiously peered out through their shared eyes. There was the crew, looking mostly as she expected: Willow and Tara were at the back table, chanting lowly next to Dawn as Giles looked on, Xander was standing nearby munching on a jelly donut, Anya was behind the counter looking intently at some kind of ledger, and...

 _Is that_ Drusilla _?!_

Young!Buffy winced. “Ouch. Much with the loud.”

The willowy vampiress was drifting aimlessly near the back wall, looking slightly bored. Her eyes snapped to the door as young!Buffy and Spike entered, face turning pouting and angry.

“The faerie is unwelcome here! Take her out!”

That earned her a chorus of “Enough, Dru!” from the Scoobies, in a fashion that seemed as automatic as breathing.

Spike sighed, glancing apologetically in Buffy’s direction. “She’s not right pleased with you – the elder you.” He got an odd look on his face. “Not right pleased with me either these days, though, truth be told.”

_I don’t understand. What is going on?_

Young!Buffy shrugged. “Do you remember when Spike went after Angelus last year – the night you were here?”

_I remember._

“Right, and he–”

“Dusted the useless git,” Spike said coldly, something dark and angry in his eyes.

 _... Really?_  Buffy felt an odd kind of pain strike her, a hundred different shades of relief and satisfaction and regret.

“Really. Drusilla was there too and… well, Spike couldn’t kill her.”

Spike shifted uncomfortably and glanced away.

“Anyway, he left her alive. Told her to get out of town.”

_And the Commandos got to her first?_

“Bingo. Luckily for her, the chip apparently doesn’t understand thrall. She managed to charm her way out of the lab.” Young!Buffy rolled her eyes. “Of course, that’s been kind of a big loophole for Drusilla to exploit. The chip doesn’t do much good when she can just convince someone to rip open their own throat for her, and be happy doing it. We caught Xander with a penknife halfway to his jugular last year.”

“Hey!” Xander exclaimed around a mouthful of donut. “I could have stopped anytime.”

“Yeah, sure you could, minion boy,” Spike said, amused.

“The dark Mas–massive wimp didn’t have any real power over me, either.”

The others just rolled their eyes at him.

Giles looked up at young!Buffy speculatively as she reached the back table. “You’re both here, then?”

“Yep. Double-Buffy reporting for duty.”

Buffy continued to watch the angry vampiress.  _Why didn’t you stake her?_

Young!Buffy sighed, biting her lip. “I couldn’t.”

Buffy caught a flash of memory, of a furious Spike and a cowering, half-starved Drusilla. “You didn’t kill me last time! And you’re still gonna do her? Bunch of sodding hypocrites!”

“That was a different us, Spike. And Drusilla’s still dangerous!”

The vampire drew himself up, looking wearied and determined. “Look. I’ll keep her from eating anyone, alright?”

Young!Buffy regarded him with disgust. “If she hurts someone, I’m staking you both.”

In the here and now, young!Buffy shrugged. “We don’t trust her still, but… well, she’s here. And physically, she’s weak enough that even Xander can subdue her.”

Buffy blinked.  _Weak? Oh. Spike never performed the ritual three years ago, did he?_

“Ritual?”

_The one that made Drusilla strong again. Ended with an almost-drained Angel._

“Huh. Nope, doesn’t ring a bell.”

Buffy mused over that, sensing young!Buffy’s lingering resentment about Drusilla’s presence in their group.  _You were jealous? And worried?_

“She almost convinced him,” young!Buffy whispered, barely audibly, “to go away with her.”

 _Ah. That explains the awkwardness._ Buffy regarded her younger self with no small amount of knowing amusement.  _I thought you didn’t even like him last year?_

“He was still supposed to be mine,” was her answer, fiercely possessive.

 _I know the feeling._  Buffy considered that.  _What stopped him?_

A long pause. “I asked him not to go.”

Another memory flitted into their mind space, of Spike standing in the open doorway at Revello Drive with a bag slung over his shoulder, looking all ready to leave. Young!Buffy was staring at him from the stairs, gripping the banister so hard it was a marvel the wood didn’t crack.

“You’re really going to leave? Just run off with the ho that left you for dead?” Young!Buffy’s voice was scathing, disbelieving. “No wait, worse than that, she  _traded_ you for Angelus. Like a freaking item exchange at the grocery store.”

“You shut your gob, Slayer!” Spike snarled from the doorway. “She’s still my responsibility, alright? And it’s sodding natural, unlike whatever the bloody fuck I’ve been doing here!”

“You’ve been helping!”

“Oh, right,” he scoffed. “Just like a vampire’s supposed to be doing. Must’ve lost my damn mind when I lost use of my legs.”

Young!Buffy crumbled at that, something hard in her breaking. The echoes of older Buffy’s love and desire were tangled in her throat, along with every feeling that was hers alone. “But I… I don’t want you to go.”

Spike stared at her for a long moment, looking angry and frustrated. Finally, he made a small, strangled noise in his throat and slammed the door shut. He threw her one last glare, then turned and strode back to the basement without another word.

Buffy let out the metaphorical breath she’d been holding as the memory faded.  _I suppose that was part of the ‘it’s complicated’?_

“Kind of. But that has mostly been me. Shocker, I know.”

Spike was regarding young!Buffy warily from across the room, where he was halfway keeping an eye on Drusilla.

_What’s he worried about?_

“That’s he’s made you disappointed in him.”

Buffy gave a surprised bark of laughter.  _Uhm, if he had any idea of what happened in my time when Drusilla came back into town, he wouldn’t be worried._

“Do I even want to know?”

_Let’s put it in Buffybot territory and say no._

“Got it. Zipping the lid on that can of worms.” Young!Buffy glanced around at her Scoobies, to where Tara and Willow had just finished chanting.

Dawn, released from her duties, hopped up and ran to young!Buffy, nearly squealing with excitement. “She’s here! She’s here, right? You’re not just over here whispering to yourself for the fun of it, right?”

“Ha ha, Dawnie. Yes, she’s here.” To Buffy, she said, “She’ll never leave us alone until she talks to you.” And with a roll of her eyes, young!Buffy sank back, pushing Buffy to the forefront.

“Hi, Dawnie.”

Dawn really did squeal this time, at a pitch high enough to make both vampires in the room wince visibly. “ _Ohmygodit’syou_! This is just like so awesome. And I hear you’re way cooler than my actual sister.”

_Hey!_

Buffy laughed, glancing over at a very amused Willow and Tara. “It’s almost like fangirl Willow all over again.”

Willow blushed. “I don’t think my excitement hit that exact octave.”

Tara regarded Buffy curiously, and Buffy felt equal parts warmth and sorrow flood her chest. “It’s good to see you, Tara.”

Tara smiled warmly, shyly. “It’s nice to meet you, ghost!Buffy.”

_Why does Tara make you sad?_

“I’ll explain later.”

Giles cleared his throat. “As much as I’d quite enjoy an unhurried reunion, I’m afraid we have more pressing matters to attend to.” He paused and smiled warmly at Buffy. “Still, welcome back, Buffy.”

Buffy returned his smile. “Thank you, Giles.” She took a deep breath and turned to the others. “Alright, catch me up. Other Buffy mentioned some of it, but she thought the spell portions were best explained by others.”

Willow nodded firmly. “Okay. So, you remember the pocket dimension I talked about last year? The one we put the ring in?”

“That was pretty much yesterday from my perspective, so yes.”

“Oh, right. I forgot.” She glanced at Tara for support. “Well… we’ve kind of decided to do the same thing to Glory.”

“Huh?”

Tara took up the reins. “We think we can trap her in that same kind of space. Only, she’s a god, so we think she could probably break out of it eventually. O-or her followers could break her out.”

“So you’re using Dawn’s power to strengthen the barrier.”

Willow beamed at her. “Exactly.”

Spike made a disapproving noise. “Still don’t see why I can’t just kill the Hell Bitch. Ring’s going to make me sodding invincible.”

Buffy shrugged. “That was actually what I originally hoped would happen.” The others stared at her, and she gave them an exasperated look. “What? I didn’t exactly know I’d be able to interact with you all like this. There wasn’t much else that was coming to mind.”

 _Ben’s still human_ , young!Buffy said vehemently, making Buffy sigh.

Giles gave her a knowing look. “I assume our Buffy has shared her stance on the situation with you?”

“She didn’t need to, really. It’s exactly how I used to feel.” Buffy frowned. “Wait. You know Ben and Glory are the same person? You got her whatever cloaking thingie removed?”

Willow nodded proudly. “After you mentioned it last year, I had Ms. Harkness show me how to do it.”

“Ms. Harkness?”

“Ah, of the Devon coven,” Giles explained.

“I’m so proud of you, Wils.”

The redhead looked at her a bit wryly. “Well, it was either witchy summer school or major yikes, apparently.”

“Hopefully not anymore.”

“On my honor, only witchiness of the good variety from this girl,” Willow proclaimed.

“Glad to hear it.” Buffy took a seat at the table and grabbed a jelly donut. “Okay, take me through the plan, step by step, guys.”

 

***

 

_Is that really how you leave Drusilla all the time?_

Young!Buffy shrugged. “Usually.”

The Scooby crew was walking to Glory’s loft from The Magic Box, after locking up Drusilla in a kind of cage in the back training room. It reminded Buffy very strongly of Giles’s weapon’s closet in Sunnydale High, although it looked cozy enough, with a soft twin bed and shelves of dollies.

_So, is she just kind of your guestage forever?_

Young!Buffy laughed. “Guestage? I like that. And I guess. We don’t really know what else to do with her. Even Spike admits leaving her free range is just inviting trouble.”

_Probably wise._

They reached the outside of Glory’s penthouse a few minutes later, and the crew stood grouped together, collectively preparing themselves. Xander, Anya, and Giles stood with crossbows, the witches had several bottles of potions, and Spike and Buffy hefted a mace and an axe, respectively.

“We’ll have to deal with her leprotic garden gnomes first, but they’re not hard, just annoying,” Buffy said.

Giles raised a brow. “Leprotic?”

“Um. Yeah. That’s a word, right?”

“Yes, quite. It’s just,” her Watcher chuckled lightly, “I’m rather astounded you used it.”

Buffy gave him a look. “I don’t always fail at the English language, Giles.”

“Only most of the time, pet,” Spike said with a chuckle.

“What is this, pick on Buffy’s speaking skills time?”

_Seriously. Rude much?_

“Sorry, luv, just startled us.”

“Yeah, well, I have over twenty years on your Buffy, so my language is bound to have improved.”

_Hey!_

Dawn rolled her eyes. “For real, guys, so not the time.” She glanced longingly at Anya’s crossbow. “Also, way not fair that I couldn’t have a weapon.”

“That’s because you’re going to be as far away from danger as possible,” young!Buffy told her firmly, taking the reins of her body. “Unfortunately for my nerves, you have to be in range for Tara and Willow to include your mojo in their spell.” She looked sternly at Xander. “Xan, you have your orders.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. “Keep the Dawnster out of godly reach.”

“You got it. Okay, guys, let’s go.”

Their entrance was pretty anti-climatic, really, from Buffy’s perspective. The last time on this day, Glory’s gnomes had been hot on Spike’s tail, rushing to fill the lower lobby with their ugly potato-sack wearing selves. Today, everything was quiet, almost unnervingly so. They all piled in the elevator, Spike hitting the button for the top floor. And then they waited as the elevator made its slow climb.

“Does anyone else feel like we should at least have some dramatic music here?” Xander said lowly.

The others just gave him a look.

The ding as they reached the top floor was really as much drama as they ended up getting. Xander tugged Dawn to the side, hiding her out of sight at the end of the hallway, while the others all surged forward.

Glory and her deformed elves just stared at them as they entered the room. “What is this?” the god exclaimed with annoyed amusement, rising from her low couch. “Are you seriously invading my apartment right now? I mean, guys, not even a phone call? A letter of intent, maybe?”

“Sorry,” young!Buffy said with a shrug. “Must’ve slipped my mind. Right along with the sign around my neck that reads ‘who cares?’”

Glory sighed noisily, raising her eyes to the ceiling. “Really, humans have no manners.” Her expression flattened, and she shrugged. “Oh, well. Guess if you want to gift-wrap yourselves for me, who am I to complain.” She waved carelessly at her minions. “Bring them to me.”

Glory’s dozen minions rushed forward with cries of “For Glorificus!” and the Scoobies met them with a clash of blades, spells, and crossbolts. Young!Buffy found herself surrounded by three of the Keebler elves rejects, and sent her axe across one’s throat and her elbow toward another. The third caught her by the hip and they crashed to the ground. A knee to the demon’s gut set her free, and she whirled around, axe spinning, using the back of the handle to smack one behind in her in the face before bringing it forward to dig into another one’s shoulder.

 _On your left_ , Buffy warned, and young!Buffy turned again, slashing out at another encroaching minion. Around her, the others were all equally entertained. But it was hardly a fair fight, and soon the crumpled bodies of Glory’s minions lay twitching on the ground, to the god’s very clear annoyance.

“You little brats. Those were my favorite minions.” Glory sighed, her expression growing hard. “I guess I’ll just have to do it myself.”

Young!Buffy smiled perkily at her. “We were kind of hoping you might say that.” She glanced back at the witches behind her. “Now!”

“Thicken!” Willow yelled, as Glory moved forward.

The god wrinkled her nose as the empty space in front of her pulsed and grew almost solid. She hit the wall with a grunt.

“Annoying,” she noted, pulling back her arm to punch at the air. The force of her blow seemed to rock the spell in a way that made the entire room shudder.

Spike came up beside young!Buffy, his face drawn and serious. “We’re almost up, pet.”

Young!Buffy nodded. “I know.”

One more blow and Glory had cut through the spell, panting slightly. “Is that the best you have? Because, wow, that’s disappointing.”

Spike grinned ferally at her. “That was just the opening act, you two-bit slapper.”

Glory gaped at him, her eyes wide with affront. “ _What_  did you just call me?!”

Young!Buffy sprang forward and landed a blow on Glory’s shocked face. “I’m pretty sure he just called you a slut,” she provided helpfully.

“Oh, I am going to love breaking in your pretty little face,” Glory said as she righted herself.

“Have to get through me first,” Spike told her, heading in for the attack.

“Sorry, I don’t do vampires,” Glory told him as she landed a stunning blow to his collarbone.

“You’re missing out,” young!Buffy panted, sideswiping her.

Glory’s eyes lit up. “Ooo! So little miss Slayer is getting it on with the mostly dead. That’s pretty kinky, honey. Didn’t think you had it in you.”

 _Are you meaning to reveal your sex life to the room?_  Buffy asked with no small amusement.

“It’s not a secret,” young!Buffy said as she traded blows with the hell god.

_No? Well, that’s definitely something you’ve done better than I did, then._

“Good to know.”

Glory regarded her with a raised brow as she fended off Spike and young!Buffy’s coordinated attack.

“Having a conversation with yourself there?”

“You have no idea,” young!Buffy said as she ducked a heavy blow.

Spike chuckled as he landed a spin kick on the god, sending her stumbling into the wall. Glory pulled herself out the plaster after a moment, wiping off her skimpy dress with a gesture of disgust. “Okay, you two are seriously getting on my nerves.”

“Kind of what we’re here for,” young!Buffy said cheerfully, grunting as Glory knocked her viciously into the carpet with a coffee table. “Ouch.”

The god smiled sweetly and grabbed one of the table shards, turning and driving it directly into Spike’s chest. Even knowing the ring was on, both Buffys had a shared moment of complete panic. But, instead of turning their lover to dust, the stake just held there.

Glory wrinkled her nose. “What the hell?”

Spike waggled his brows at her suggestively. “Ooo, that tickles. Do it again.”

Glory threw up her hands. “Seriously, a vampire that won’t die? This day is getting boring.” She rolled her eyes at Spike as he wrenched out the shard and helped Buffy to her feet. “Still a god here, guys. It’s not like you can kill me, either.”

Young!Buffy gave her a condescending look. “We aren’t trying to kill you.” She glanced back to where Tara and Willow were chanting, more loudly now. It was time. “We just needed you to stay put.”

Glory regarded the two witches with amusement. “Oh, please, if it’s anything like your– Hey!”

A large white portal appeared next to the god, shimmering and twining around her limbs with oddly sucking tendrils, like a thrashing octopus. Glory struck out at the shimmering bits, but her fingers passed through them like air. Instead, the motion served to coat her skin with more of the ethereal substance, every speck of it dragging her toward the shimmering window, like the gravity of the sun toward a planet.

“Hey!” Glory yelled again. “What is this?”

“It’s your new home,” young!Buffy said with a smile, watching as the god was dragged, now screaming, half into the portal. “Enjoy your stay.”

Glory began to flail wildly as the portal continued to eat her. “ _You horrid little–_ ”

And then she was gone, the silvery portal collapsing into itself with a loud sucking sound.

Young!Buffy and Spike exchanged a long look before turning back to the Scoobies, who looked equal parts amazed, shocked, and elated.

“I don’t know about you guys,” young!Buffy said easily, “but I’m starving.”

Xander peeked around the corner from the hallway, Dawn right beside him. “How’s pizza sound to everyone?”

Giles cleared his throat, giving Glory’s now empty spot one last look. “I do believe that pizza might be just the thing.”

Spike dropped his mace and went to where the two witches were starting to drop. He caught Tara with one arm, smiling as young!Buffy stepped next to him and held up Willow.

“How about you, Wils? Up for some pizza?” young!Buffy asked.

Willow laughed wearily, her face still slack with shock. “Only if we can get olives on one,” she said finally, grinning.

“I want anchovies,” Dawn added.

The others all groaned.

 

***

 

 _You didn’t even really need me today, you know,_ Buffy said later, as young!Buffy came down the stairs from settling Dawn into bed.

Young!Buffy smiled at that. “I know. But I’m really glad you were there.”

_Me too._

Young!Buffy headed into the kitchen and out the back door, stepping into the cool spring night. Spike was waiting for her on the back steps, a mug of hot chocolate sitting in the empty spot at his side. He glanced over at her as she slid down next to him, the tingle of his presence soothing her young self’s nerves.

“Long day,” Spike said easily.

“Good day,” young!Buffy returned, leaning her head against his shoulder.

The vampire tensed slightly at her motion, then snaked an arm around her waist and drew her closer. When she didn’t protest, he exhaled slowly in relief.

“You should keep the ring,” young!Buffy said softly.

Spike looked at her sharply, brow raised. “That right?”

Young!Buffy shrugged, her thoughts swirling with amusement at his obvious shock. “Well, sure.” A beat. “I sort of like it when you can’t get all dusty.”

Spike chuckled. “Rather like that myself.” He gazed at her lovingly, hesitantly. “Buffy… I just… will you give me a real chance, pet? ”

Young!Buffy bit her lip, but didn’t turn away. “You mean, will I listen to my older, more screwed up self?”

 _I should probably feel offended by that,_  Buffy thought dryly,  _but it’s unfortunately true._

Young!Buffy snuggled in closer to Spike's shoulder, nestling tight against his cool body. “Yes,” she whispered finally.

Neither Buffy missed the shuddering exhalation of breath from their vampire.

“Thank you,” he whispered hoarsely.

 _I love you, Spike_ , Buffy thought gently, her entire existence suffused with want and warmth and need.

“Let’s go to bed,” young!Buffy said instead.


	7. Day 6: Hope for the Best

Buffy’s first sensation on day six was that of intense heaviness, followed quickly by aching pain. Her other self’s eyes weren’t open, but it was a familiar enough feeling for Buffy (almost-death number eight, if she was remembering correctly) that she figured it out after a moment. Young!Buffy was hanging, chained by her wrists. Based on the smell of damp rock and the seeping cold, she was likely in a cave of some kind. And whatever had been done to put her younger self there had left some serious bruises.

_Well, this isn’t exactly how I imagined waking up today._

Young!Buffy groggily came to, mind racing as she struggled to remember where she was. “Ugh. Me neither.”

_We didn’t die, right?_

“Not yet, anyway.”

_Ritual sacrifice?_

“Pretty sure. There was weird chanty stuff before. And I think I saw a dead chicken.”

_Oh yeah. Sounds about right._

Young!Buffy twisted desperately in her chains, grimacing as the shackles bit deeply into her wrists. Her skin was the only thing to give. “Well, crap.” Frustrated, she stopped struggling and just let herself hang. They fell quiet.

“So,” young!Buffy said eventually, conversationally, when the silence began to get to them both a few minutes later, “what happened today in your original time?”

_Uhm, I had sex with Spike._

“From what I gathered from you before, that could cover a lot of days this year.”

_For you too, I hope,_  Buffy returned snappily.

“Well yeah, but,” young!Buffy smiled knowingly, “I think mine’s for a better reason than yours.”

Buffy laughed.  _Honestly? This year was ‘cross my fingers and hope for the freaking best_.’

“The best being me having not died?”

_Yep._

“What was the contingency plan if I did?”

_If I ended up even waking up today after that? Don’t fuck up everything else._

“Spike?”

_Yeah. We kind of tore down a building._

“Fighting or having sex?”

_Uhm. Both._

“Sounds kind of hurty.” Young!Buffy paused. “And not in the good way.”

_Spike fell on most of the debris._

“That was nice of him.”

_It wasn’t entirely intentional._

The two Buffys paused again while young!Buffy made another futile attempt to dislodge her chains.

“Ugh.”

_So, care to update me on this little predicament?_

"Oh, you know, just another Tuesday on the Hellmouth. Nothing like an early jog, maybe some light napping, and opening an evil portal to destroy the world."

_Who're our guys?_

Young!Buffy sent her an image of several burly demons, almost as large as cars, tusked and gray like elephants, with beady spider-like eyes.

_They're pretty._

“And they hit like freight trains. Ouch.” Young!Buffy sighed. “Didn't exist in your time then?”

_Sorry, nada. Don't remember their type from any other year, either. Pretty sure I didn't meet them at all, or else I would've remembered._

"Really? They're gross, but I wouldn't call them like incredibly memorable." Young!Buffy paused, considering. "Well, discounting the whole 'chained me in a cave' thing."

_They're obviously pretty strong. They would’ve been good candidates._

"Candidates for what exactly?"

_Uhm. Something that could take off my head._

Young!Buffy blinked rapidly. "Excuse me?"

_Did Spike ever tell you about Slayers and deathwishes?_

There was a flood of understanding.  _Oh._

_Right._  Buffy sighed.  _I'm immortal, okay? Or, I was. And worse than that, I was apparently mostly unkillable. Never had my head taken off, though, so..._

"You're serious? Why are you just telling me this now?"

_It came about as a side effect of all the crap we've hopefully now prevented. Not really important in the scheme of things._

Young!Buffy was quiet for a long moment. "I wouldn't mind being immortal. Or, at least, not aging."

_Seeing wrinkles, are we?_

"Well, no, but..."

_Spike's not getting any older. Physically speaking._

"Yeah." Young!Buffy made a shrugging motion, mostly hampered by her current positioning. "Not that I really expect to get to that point, anyway. I mean, I would be dead twice over by now without you. Odds are good there will be an actual death here soon." She rolled her eyes. "Maybe today if I can't get out of these stupid shackles."

_Where are the others?_

"Hopefully super with the unchainy somewhere."

_Do they know you're here?_

"Probably they do by now." Young!Buffy exhaled noisily in irritation. "All I wanted to do was go to the stupid grocery store last night. Dawnie ate the rest of the ice cream and forgot to mention it. Didn't expect full-on badness in the parking lot."

_Gotta love Sunnydale. It was always a place of a different kind._

Young!Buffy made a small, surprised noise in her throat. “Huh. I always forget you probably weren’t in Sunnydale anymore in your time, were you? Not if the Hellmouth got blown up.”

_Along with the entire town._

“Whoa.” Young!Buffy’s thoughts were whirling. “I can’t imagine here not existing.”

_I couldn’t either. Not until it happened._  Pain burned bright in Buffy’s non-existent chest.  _I lost pretty much everything that mattered when it did. Everything that wasn’t slaying, anyway._

“Where were you, before you started coming here?”

_Most recently? Bratsk, Russia._

“What in the world were you doing there?”

_Hunting. As always._

Her younger self grew quiet for a long moment. “For something strong enough to kill you.”

_Yep._

“God. No wonder you drank.”

Buffy laughed inside their shared head, darkly humorous and wry.  _It’s funny_ , she said softly.  _A week ago – from my perspective, anyway – I thought there would never be anything else. Ever. My home was gone. I’d chased away all the friends that I had left. And the man I wanted more than anything else in the world had been dead, really truly dead, for two decades. Sobriety wasn’t exactly a plus in my book._

“Did you ever try to move on?”

_What? You mean, did I sleep with anyone after him?_

“Well, or, you know, date.”

Buffy snorted.  _I didn’t have a heart left that could even contemplate dating. Sex was the best I could manage._  She sighed.  _I slept with a couple guys. And they were all mistakes. Had to get incredibly sloshed to even do it, and then waking up next to them just made my skin crawl. Even tried a woman once, thinking it might be better._

Young!Buffy blinked. “Really? How was that?”

_Sad. I ended up sobbing in her arms. She was kind about it, even though she’d really only signed up for a meaningless fuck._  Buffy gave the impression of a shrug.  _I really don’t have a thing for women, as it turns out._   _When she got me off, I had to close my eyes and pretend I didn’t smell her perfume or feel her tits on my thigh. Her hands are what made me cry though. Spike has such long, slender fingers. Too much like hers. I forgot for a second that it wasn’t him thrusting in me._

Young!Buffy seemed to consider that for a long moment. “I never asked you… Is it hard, being here? I know we’re not quite the same – that this place isn’t quite the same – as what you knew.”

_That was really kind of the point of me returning, you know._

“Well, yeah, but…”

_It’s not mine?_

“Yeah.”

Buffy let all the warmth and gratitude and joy that she’d been able to reclaim in the last few days flow through her and into her younger self.  _It’s not. And you have no idea how glad that makes me._

There was a scuffling in the distance, and the faint sound of masculine cursing, followed by a smug female voice saying, “I told you to bring a flashlight, Xander. What is it about men and not wanting to be prepared?”

“Hardwired in,” Xander’s voice answered with a rueful sigh.

“It’s a good thing I’m not a man, then,” Anya’s voice replied matter-of-factly, followed by the faintest of lights shining through the dark.

“Have you had this the entire time, Ahn?”

“Well, yes, of course.”

“You didn’t think to pull it out?”

“I thought about it, but I wanted to see if you were just being ridiculously male or not first.”

“I’m not a science experiment, Ahn.”

“No, you’re Xander. My sexy fiancé who gives me many wonderful orgasms.” There was a pause. “I’ve never had sex in a cave before.”

“We kind of have more important things to do right now, honey.”

“But later?”

There was an exasperated, fond sigh. “Yes. Later.”

_The cavalry has arrived, apparently,_  Buffy said dryly.

“Could really have used the reinforcements with super strength,” young!Buffy grumbled, tugging at her manacles again.

Xander and Anya stumbled into the small cavern where young!Buffy was being held a minute later.

“Whoa, Buff,” Xander said, peering up at her, her feet swinging about a foot above his head, “I know you and Spike are into the kinky stuff, but this seems a little extreme.”

Young!Buffy stuck out her tongue at him. “Very funny, Xan.” She rattled her chains pointedly. “Don’t suppose you brought lock cutters or something?”

Anya gave Xander a look. “I couldn’t even convince him to bring a flashlight.”

“So we heard.”

Xander blinked at her, glancing around. “We?”

Young!Buffy nodded. “My other self is tagging along today.”

“Oh!” Xander eyed her speculatively. “Huh. She couldn’t get you out of there?”

“She’s not a genie, Xan. It’s still my body.”

Anya waved up at her politely. “Welcome back, ghost!Buffy. You picked a very strange day to return.”

_You’re telling me._

“She says she knows,” young!Buffy translated. “It sounds like it was a pretty different day in her time.”

Anya nodded easily to that. “I understand. I once made a man relive the same day seventy-two times. I don’t think he did it the same way twice.”

Xander furrowed his brows. “Seventy-two? What was the significance of that?”

“Oh, it was the number of times he cheated on his wife.”

“Do I even want to know what day you made him relive?”

“Probably not,” Anya said honestly. Although really, Buffy considered, there was no real other setting for the ex-demon.

“I see that hasn’t changed at least,” young!Buffy said with amusement, catching her thoughts.

“Huh?” Xander looked up at her. “What hasn’t changed?”

“Anya’s honesty.”

Anya beamed up at her. “Honesty is the best policy.” She frowned. “After ‘no returns on clearance items,’ of course.”

Xander and young!Buffy exchanged a look.

“So,” young!Buffy said after a moment, “did you happen to see my BDSM-friendly best buds on your way in here? Talk, dark, and ugly?”

“They’re saying hello to Spike at the cave entrance,” Anya said brightly. “Or I guess Spike is saying hello to them?”

Xander nodded. “Yeah, it’s a pretty familiar ‘hello,’ too. Lots of touching.”

Young!Buffy rolled her eyes. “Guess that answers my next question then, of ‘Where is my reckless idiot of a boyfriend?’”

“Well, he does have a ring that makes him mostly unkillable,” Anya said reasonably. “I’d be reckless too.”

Buffy snorted a mental laugh.  _Me too, Ahn. Me too._

“You were  _trying_  to die. I don’t think that’s the same thing,” young!Buffy told her.

_Different goals. Same treatment._

“Huh?” Xander said.

“Oh, just turns out my older half was super suicidal. Only, she couldn’t really die.”

“That must have been very annoying,” Anya said sympathetically.

_You have no idea._

Young!Buffy just sighed in exasperation, but was saved from further commentary by a sudden distressed and furious roaring, with accompanying gleeful laughter that could only belong to a certain bleached vampire.

“Yeah, that’s right, Big Ugly. Give ol’ Spike your best what for.” A pause, with more enraged roaring. “That all you got, mate? Seen bloody krevlos demons with more strength than you.”

After another bout of thunderous howls, there was the decisive sound of a head being relieved of a body, and then a very beady, very bloody, and very dead tusked demon head rolled into the cavern.

Xander scooted away from it with a shudder, while Anya just examined it clinically.

“A very clean job,” the ex-demon announced.

“Thanks, luv,” Spike said, sidling into the dim light with a fierce grin, an axe thrown over his shoulder. He glanced up at young!Buffy with a raised brow. “Bit tied up there, Slayer?”

“I swear to god, Spike, if you don’t get me down from here in the next ten seconds, you are sleeping on the couch for a week,” young!Buffy told him vehemently.

“That’s no way to thank your savior, pet.”

“You are such a dead man.”

“Tell me summat I don’t know, yeah?”

“God damnit, Spike! Get. Me. Down.”

“Say ‘please’.”

“I am going to stake you!”

“Sure it’ll tickle, pet.”

Young!Buffy glared at him murderously, which only made Spike grin more broadly.

Anya tugged at Xander. “We should leave.”

Xander blinked at her. “Huh? Why?”

“Because Buffy is either going to beat on Spike until she gets tired of it, or they’re going to be naked as soon as the shackles come off. Probably both.”

“Probably,” Spike agreed easily.

Xander flushed. “Right. Let’s go, Ahn.”

Anya seemed to reconsider then. “Although… Spike is very attractive. Seeing him naked would likely be a very enjoyable experience.”

Xander’s face grew slack in alarm. “We’re leaving,” he said firmly, tugging the ex-demon away with sudden fervor.

 

***

 

Anya was only mostly right. It took about thirty seconds after she was free for young!Buffy to get naked. At which point she punched Spike directly in the face, with a level of force that audibly snapped his neck back.

“Ooh, feisty, Slayer,” Spike purred, delivering his own return blow that sent her stumbling in the cave wall.

Young!Buffy responded by spinning and delivering his collarbone an unforgiving round-house kick that likely would have shattered it under normal circumstances. Spike just touched his collar with a slight grimace, followed by a smirk.

“Missed the heart there, pet. Hanging must’ve made your aim wonky.” And then the vampire abruptly swept her legs out from under her.

“You are a son of a bitch,” young!Buffy told him darkly, trading a series of fierce blows as she sprang to her feet.

Buffy followed their battle for a long moment, quiet.  _Huh,_  she said at last.  _I guess some things really don’t change. Although, you can’t really tear down a cave._

Her sudden interjection threw young!Buffy off her rhythm, allowing Spike to pin her painfully to the ground. He frowned at her.

“That was bloody sloppy.”

Young!Buffy huffed at him. “I got distracted.”

Spike spent a long, purposeful minute examining her naked body. “Your body is very distracting,” he agreed.

Young!Buffy rolled her eyes. “No, I mean, my other self is here today.”

Spike raised a brow, looking into her eyes intently. “That so?” His vicious grin faded into something strangely gentle and husky. “Welcome back, Buffy.”

Young!Buffy squirmed angrily against the vampire. “Are you seriously flirting with the other me right now?! You are  _so_ dust!”

He shrugged, smirk returning. “What? Not allowed to enjoy a lil ménage-à-trois, luv? Two Buffys is enough to keep a bloke abed for a century.”

Young!Buffy glared at him, but Buffy could feel her internal pleasure at his compliment.

_He always did manage to wrap those in the dirtiest packages,_ Buffy said with no small amount of amusement. A beat, then she added softly,  _I’ve missed that so much._

Her words seemed to take all the fight out of young!Buffy. Sensing her change in mood, Spike abruptly loosened his grip, and his expression turned affectionate and slightly worried. “Alright there, Slayer?”

Young!Buffy reached up and pointedly pulled his duster down from his shoulders. “Make love to us,” she said simply.

“Us?”  _Us?_  Spike and Buffy asked at the same time.

“Yes,” young!Buffy affirmed, stroking the vampire’s cheek with incredible tenderness. “She’s missed you more than I can imagine. I don’t want her to miss you anymore.” Young!Buffy gazed at him firmly, love pouring from her every thought. “And I never want to miss you that way.”

Spike’s face gentled into a very familiar expression of tenderness and awe. “Buffy…”

“No more talkies,” she told him sternly, leaning up to catch his mouth in hers.

There was a strange kind of fluidity between the two Buffys then, as young!Buffy immersed herself entirely in the feeling of Spike’s lips. It was so close to the mindlessness of meditation that Buffy found herself surging forward to take control without any real demand. Found herself bending her lips around her lost lover, and whimpering at the familiarity of his body grinding against hers.

“Buffy… Buffy… Buffy…” her vampire murmured, as his hands wound down her body, teasing her nipples and her neck and her thighs.

Both Buffys were lost then, in the vampire that somehow managed to make thought an unnecessary portion of life. Who needed a mind when there was a body? When there was a heart pounding away, with crimson ferocity and unspeakable fragility?

Spike was speaking to both of them, they knew, and – in those moments – ‘they’ was really all there was. Young!Buffy undid Spike’s belt buckle as Buffy bit the soft flesh of his shoulder. Buffy shoved her vampire backward onto the ground, even as young!Buffy straddled him again, taking his hardened cock into her hand. Buffy’s lips bent around his shaft as young!Buffy stroked his balls. Young!Buffy swallowed down every ounce of his spilling seed, even as Buffy stretched herself upward to his chest, drowning in the sound of his hoarse, pleasured moans.

They both felt Spike’s cock thrust into them, equally needy and keening and full. They both kissed him back desperately, hands raking across his back and his ass and his panting chest. They both shuddered into half-unconsciousness as he rubbed their clit with a calloused finger, driving them to see stars and heaven in a mindspace that had before held only the two of them. They both cried out his name in tones of infinite want and need and pleasure as he fucked them into the damp dirt. And it was into both of them that Spike finally gasped a warning breath as he spilled wildly into their spasming passage.

And he gathered both of them into his arms afterward, face buried in their hair. “I love you, Buffy,” he told them, his voice soft with sated lust and brimming with devotion and pride and amazement.

“We love you too, Spike,” they told him in return, clinging tightly against his chest, burying themselves as close to his skin as was humanly possible.

 

***

 

It was late, and the entirety of the Scooby gang was gathered in the dining room at Revello Drive, most of them tipsy off wine and laughter and happiness.

“No!” Anya sputtered with laughter. “I thought I was married to Giles?!”

The Watcher in question looked at her wryly, sipping carefully from his own glass of wine. “Quite my sentiment indeed.”

Buffy grinned. “Oh, yeah. And there was this ridiculous shark demon after Spike. Only Spike thought he was human, and Giles’s son.”

Spike nearly spit out his wine. “I  _what?!_ ”

Xander giggled uncontrollably. “Oh god, I would pay good money to see that!”

Willow eyed them all with affected superiority. “Well, just let me turn into Miss Evil Black Eyes and,” she waved her hand broadly, “Poof! Confusion all around!”

Tara smiled at her gently, teasingly. “That incantation sounds a little too nice for a dark spell, sweetie.”

“Oh, well then… ‘loads of confusion and mistaken identity all around’!” Willow declared, with a grin.

Dawn eyed them all from her edge of the dining room table, very obviously having been trying to avoid attention so she didn’t get sent to bed, but unable to sit out all of the merriment entirely. Both Buffys had pretended not to notice when Spike slipped her intermittent sips of his wine. “I want to hear about the Buffybot,” she declared cheerily.

Buffy raised a brow, giving Tara a mischievous look the blonde witch had no way of understanding. “Well, supposedly, she was built for Spike to play checkers with…”

 

***

 

Young!Buffy crawled into bed that night with a full stomach and a bursting heart. Neither Buffy was really sure whose parts belonged to whom, at that point, but it was really okay.

“I love you,” young!Buffy told herself sleepily, collapsing into Spike’s waiting arms.

_I love you, too,_  Buffy answered softly, as they both drifted off to sleep.


	8. Day 7: See it to the End (Part 1)

“So what happens at the end, Cordelia? What happens to me?”

“Oh, that.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Yes,  _that_. Am I going to be stuck as some weird alter ego in my other self’s head for all of eternity?”

“No. You…” Cordelia paused, looking somewhat apologetic. “You kind of go off the rails and… stop existing.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ll be a rupture in the time stream, remember? Once you change something, this version of your life is basically obsolete. You being around forever would screw things up almost as badly as they are now. ”

Buffy felt everything in her still. “So I just… go away?”

“Pretty much. You’re going to kind of get sucked into oblivion.”

Leave it to Cordelia to not pull any punches.

“So I won’t exist. At all? Not any speck of me?”

“That’s a no.”

Immense disappointment warred with incredible relief, hot and heavy in Buffy’s veins. She would be done. Finally, she would be done. And yet, some version of her might just be with  _him._  “I guess I’d better make sure I don’t screw this up then.”

 

***

 

For the first time, Buffy woke up in the exact same place where she’d fallen asleep: in Spike’s arms.

And for the first time, young!Buffy noticed her existence almost as soon as Buffy did. “Spike, she’s here.”

The vampire mumbled sleepily against her shoulder, not really awake, until young!Buffy elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

“Bloody hell, woman!”

Young!Buffy just gave him a stern look. “She’s here.”

Spike blinked up at her young self owlishly, a sleepy smile on his face “’Lo, Buffy.”

Buffy felt warmth rush through her existence.  _Hello, lover._

Young!Buffy smiled. “Tell him again,” she said gently, slipping back abruptly in their shared mind.

Buffy rushed forward and gently caressed her vampire’s cheek with a light touch. “Hello, lover.”

Spike smirked at her tone. “You act like you haven’t seen me in a year, pet.”

“Very funny. It’s only been a blink for me, you know.”

Spike chuckled. “I know.”

Buffy glanced around, frowning. She had expected they’d be on Revello Drive, in her mother’s once-room, if not her childhood one or the basement cot. Instead, they were in a smallish, sparsely decorated bedroom that seemed strangely familiar, even if she couldn’t quite…

“Are we in Giles’s guest room?”

“That we are, luv.”

Deep, abiding fear laced down her spine. “Oh god. What happened?”

Young!Buffy snorted.  _The house is still there. It’s just full._

“Full? Fuck. The Potentials are there?”

_… Potentials? Potentials to what?_

Some of the tightness in Buffy’s chest eased. “Oh. Good. Never mind.” A pause. “Wait. Who’s in the house, then?”

“’Bout half the damn Sunnyhell construction industry,” Spike said sourly.

“Huh?”

_Glory’s minions kind of did a number on it._

Buffy blinked. “Glory? As in ‘hell god extraordinaire’ Glory?”

_The one and only._

“She escaped from the pocket dimension?”

_With help._

Buffy narrowed her eyes, trying dig through the tumult of her younger self’s thoughts. Snatches of images found her. Glory’s realized escape, with a thunderous earthquake that shook the town. The hell god’s sudden pre-occupation with the Hellmouth as a means of getting home. Images of dark-robed men with thick oozing stitches where there had once been eyes.

“The First,” Buffy whispered hoarsely, everything in her filling with dread.  _God, please don’t let this be one of the things destined to happen. Not again._

Young!Buffy thoughts were soothing, steely.  _Not if I have any say in it._

“You seem calm.”

 _You’re here_ , was her simple reply.

Buffy laughed darkly. “You do remember that I’m here because I fucked it all up last time, right?”

Spike squeezed her hand tightly. “I’d say you did just fine this go around, luv.”

Buffy’s borrowed stomach felt heavy, and she shook her head violently, angrily. “Apparently not. It’s all still happening again.” She paused. “But… how exactly is it happening again? Buffy, you didn’t die, right?”

_No deathy-ness here._

“But the First is still trying to kill the Slayer line?”

Spike blinked at her, paralleling her younger self’s mental equivalent.

“Kill the line?” Spike repeated, scarred brow raised. “No, pet. Nothing like that. Think we’re just in the way, matter of fact.”

Buffy scrunched up her nose. “Okay, now I’m lost.”

Spike waved absently, leaning back against the headboard. “Best if my Buffy explains. You two chits have that fun little memory bit going on, and all.”

Young!Buffy mentally rolled her eyes.  _From what you mentioned, your resurrection crossed some kind of mystical line, right? Wrecked the fabric of existence and so on?”_

“Right.” Buffy sighed. “We talked about it for a lot of years after the fact, and never came to any final conclusions as to exactly what it had done. The Eye of Beljoxa was mostly annoyingly vague about the whole thing. By the last time I was a part of discussions, it was speculated that the presence of two Slayers who were active holders of the line – as I apparently became once I was resurrected – created a magical crack in the system. A kind of redundancy that started to trainwreck the whole the thing, and allowed the First Evil a level of freedom it hadn’t seen in, well, ever. Activating all the Potential Slayers around the world just made things about a million times worse.” She paused thoughtfully. “Cordelia pretty much confirmed we had it right when she showed up at my apartment.”

Young!Buffy’s shock pushed her back into control of her body. “ _You activated all the world’s Potential Slayers?!_ ”

 _Uhm. Yep._  Buffy sighed _. We didn’t know it was a horrible idea at the time. Well, not anymore horrible than the other ideas we had._

Spike frowned at them. “Activated all the Slayers? Bloody awful idea aside, pet, what was the point?”

_Turok-han._

Young!Buffy frowned and shrugged at Spike. “Turmeric ham?”

 _Turok-han,_  Buffy said more clearly.  _Ubervamps. The First Evil raised an entire army of them. There’s a seal in the high school that keeps them locked away in one of the Hellmouth’s caverns._ She paused, letting slip one of her worst memories, made crystal clear even after twenty years by the slew of re-occurring nightmares that had become her nightly rest. A memory of her staring into the mouth of hell at a field of monstrous ubervamps, spread farther than the eye could see. Waiting to spin the world into darkness.

Young!Buffy gasped. “Oh my god.” She glanced at Spike. “Whole army of badness.”

“Like Hell Bitch’s blind lookers?”

Young!Buffy shook her head. “No, not the Bringers. Some other things… they looked kind of like the Master, only… I get the feeling from my other self that these were old monsters. All with the strong and scary.”

_According to Giles, they were the things that vampires fear._

“The things that vampires fear? Oh geez. They sound like barrels of fun.”

_They were. If they’re still trapped under the seal, I guess that’s one thing I didn’t manage to completely screw up again._

Young!Buffy sighed. “If it makes you feel better, what’s happening now wasn’t exactly your – or my – fault. The Bringers figured out a way to jailbreak Glory from the pocket dimension. Only, whatever they did created a really nasty inter-dimensional tear that the First is apparently using for its benefit. As if that wasn’t delightful enough, our favorite ho-bag hell god now wants to use the thin dimensional walls of the Hellmouth to get home, since her window has passed to use Dawnie.”

_What’s the First get out of that?_

“As far as we can tell? Glory exiting this way will kind of blow the Hellmouth wide open. Permanently. It’ll be a Baddie free-for-all.”

_Oh goody._

“Yeah.” Young!Buffy frowned. “Did you know this First guy can take on the form of different dead people? Super with the annoying.”

Buffy laughed.  _Yep. I’ve known for ages. Since… Oh! You never met the First in high school like I did, did you?_

“Uhm. No.”

_I guess you wouldn’t have… Not with Angel no longer a threat to it._

“Now  _I’m_  lost.”

_Don’t worry. Lots of history that no longer matters._

Young!Buffy just nodded. It was a tired motion. “If you say so.” She shrugged. “So the moral of our uber fun story is that the First doesn’t really care about us at all. We’re just irritating it.”

Spike growled at that. “I’ll do more than irritate it soon.”

“Oh, please, you wish,” came a new voice, femininely amused.

Young!Buffy and Spike snapped their attention to the corner of the room, where Jenny Calendar stood, smiling indulgently. She looked exactly as Buffy had last seen her so many years before, from her gray lace sweater to her shoulder length hair. She looked exactly as she had on the day she died.

Spike leapt from the bed with a snarl, uncaring of his nakedness as he stalked toward the apparition. “I thought I told you to get out before I rip out your brainstem, you miserable arsemonger!”

Jenny just rolled her eyes. “Righhht. Because threats of physical violence on an incorporeal being are just so effective. I can see the Slayer isn’t with you for your brains, William.”

Young!Buffy slid from the bed to her feet, every inch of her tense and coiled to strike. “What do you want,” she demanded flatly.

Jenny threw her a knowing smile. “Oh, I just came to say hello to our new visitor. We’re old friends, aren’t we, Buffy?”

 _Tag_ , Buffy said firmly, and her younger self immediately settled back. Buffy forced her borrowed body to unclench its fists. “Miss me that much, did you?” Buffy said conversationally. “Hard to believe, considering how soundly I kicked your ass last time we played this game. Turns out you  _can_  do that to an ‘incorporeal being,’ after all. You’re pretty useless without any followers or army.”

Jenny’s expression turned sharp and mocking, meaner than anything the actual woman had ever displayed in life. “And look how well that turned out for you. Sent back by the pathetic Powers That Be.” She chuckled lowly. “And all they really did was give me a second chance.”

Buffy shrugged uncaringly. “Seems to me like you’re down a few pawns this time, Effie. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Effie,’ do you? ‘The First Evil’ is just so formal. And we  _are_  old friends, after all.”

Jenny’s face turned stone hard, evaluating. Finally, she laughed, loud and dark and chilling. “You think you have nothing to lose, you poor immortal soon-to-be-dead Slayer.” She tapped the side of her nose, lowering her voice to a whisper. “But, believe me, when you’re gone after today, Buffy, it’ll be with this miserable world choking on the fumes of hell.” Her gaze flicked briefly to Spike. “I’ve never gotten to torture a vampire who can’t die. What fun that must be.” Then she smiled smugly at Buffy’s rigid face and disappeared.

Spike snarled as soon as she was gone, eyes flashing yellow. “Manky mingebag!”

Buffy let out a deep breath. “Yeah, Effie’s a super bitch.”

Young!Buffy laughed lowly in their shared head.  _I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen the First Evil actually angry._

Buffy smiled ruefully. “I learned too late the first time around that the First wields most of its power in words. It got to us all, in one way or another. Decided turn-around was fair play.”

“Was brilliant, luv,” Spike said appreciatively. He sighed. “Not that we needed the bloody early morning visitor, but best get a move on, anyhow. Oz and Dru should be here by now.”

Buffy blinked at him. “Did… did you just say  _Oz_  and  _Dru_?” What the hell? Had she missed a memo somewhere? “As in, Willow’s ex-boyfriend Oz, and your ex-crazypants honey Dru?”

Spike gave her a tolerant look. “Do you know any other Oz and Dru, Slayer?”

 _Oh, I forgot to mention that_ , young!Buffy said apologetically.  _Didn’t think about it when you were back last time, what with the unexpected almost-sacrifice and all._

“Think about what exactly?”

_Oz briefly came back to Sunnydale last year. He said a PTB agent had found him._

Buffy sighed. “Oh, geez. Let me guess: they wanted him to be one of their Champions on earth? Help the helpless… Stop apocalypses… Rescue kittens… Blah blah blah?”

_Pretty much._

“How’s Dru come into this?”

Spike snorted as he pulled on a pair of jeans. “Wolf took one look at her and decided she fit the bill as ‘helpless.’ Been keeping her as a kind of charge.” He threw her an amused look. “Bloody strange, but they get along right well enough.”

Buffy raised a brow. “Really? I mean, Oz gets along with pretty much everybody, but… Drusilla likes him?”

 _Calls him her ‘sweet doggie.’ Has some kind of weirdly protective feelings toward him,_  young!Buffy said, amused.

“Huh. Well, I guess I have to see this for myself.”

Spike tilted his head, eyes growing distant for a moment as he listened or felt for something. “Expect you will in a tick, pet. They’re in the living room.”

Buffy tugged on a t-shirt and slacks that her young self pointed out, tying up their hair with a loose tie. “Well, let’s go say hello then.”

As they headed down the stairs to the main level, Buffy smiled slightly at the hubbub of noise.

“I told you not to touch that!” came Dawn’s irritated voice.

“I just wanted to look at it,” was the whining reply.  _Andrew?_

Young!Buffy laughed.  _Yep. Jonathan’s here, too._  Her younger self’s thoughts grew darker.  _Warren’s in jail._

Buffy’s heart leapt in her chest. “Tara?”

_Downstairs._

Buffy exhaled a relieved breath. “Everyone’s okay, then?”

There was a clear hesitation from her younger self, and Buffy stopped them on the middle of the stairs. “Who died?” she asked calmly.

Young!Buffy’s thoughts were quietly weary.  _You ask that so nonchalantly._

“I’ve seen a lot of people die. Led some of them there.”

 _I know the feeling_ , was the whispered reply. Unbidden, a bright and burning image – vividly painted, is if it had been imagined and reimagined a hundred times – showed a bloodied Willow draped in young!Buffy’s arms. Her hair, bright red as always, simply helped hide the mockery that had once been her skull. Young!Buffy was collapsed in shuddering sobs over her dead friend, unable to look away from the witch’s green-eyed gaze, staring blankly into nothing.

“Oh, Buffy…”

Young!Buffy flinched inside their head.  _She’s the only person the First really came after. Almost before we knew what was going on. The Bringers attacked her in broad daylight. She left a pile of bodies behind, but…_

Buffy gripped the banister against the crushing guilt and sorrow flowing through her borrowed body. “She was…” Buffy took a deep breath. “Willow was the one who truly wrecked things for the First last time.” She sighed, something hard and hurting in her finally unraveling after two decades, like a clenched muscle giving way with painful release. “She did a lot of harm in the end – and long before it – but we would have died without her.”

Spike’s hand was on her shoulder then, squeezing gently. “Red was a solid bird.”

“More so in this time,” Buffy said softly, wincing. “I guess that makes it worse.”

_I miss her._

“I know.” Buffy gave her other self a tight mental hug. “I know.”

Tight determination flowed from her younger self, a kind of solid fierceness that Buffy recognized almost intimately.  _I will send the First and Slutzilla packing if it’s the last thing I do._

Buffy just nodded and continued down the stairs. “I know,” she said again.

The sight of Giles’s living room was all at once familiar and entirely alien. Where there had once been only absurdly neat tabletops and empty flooring accented by a few key ornaments, there was now an overflowing assortment of  _stuff_. Stacks of books littered the floor at every turn, accompanied by a myriad of boxes and statues and weaponry that seemed to sprout randomly from every nook and cranny. And wherever stuff wasn’t, people were.

“Whoa, Giles. Did The Magic Box vomit in your apartment?”

Giles turned to the staircase from where he had wedged himself at his once-tidy desk. He gave her a speculative look. “Buffy?”

“Ghost!Buffy, in the flesh,” Buffy confirmed dryly.

Andrew leapt up from the couch with a gasp, startling the others. He tugged at Jonathan urgently. “You’re here! Oh my god, this is just like when Katie Pryde goes into her younger self to save all the mutants from internment by rescuing Senator Kelly. And she’s  _so_  cool.”

Jonathan nodded fervently. “ _Days of Future Past_ , issue 141.”

Andrew frowned at him. “And 142.”

Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Well, duh.”

Dawn groaned from the other side of the living room and threw a couch pillow at Jonathan.

“Hey!”

She glared at him. “That’s it! I can’t take it anymore. If you don’t shut up about the comic books, I’m going to flush all of your stupid figurines down the toilet!”

Andrew sniffed at her. “We hid all of them yesterday.”

Dawn rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. They’re behind the fridge.”

Jonathan gaped at her. “Who told you?”

Xander looked up from the far end of the living room, where he had been quietly chatting with Anya on the floor. “Because, Captain Obvious, that’s where you hid them last time.”

“Didn’t think you’d guess to look there twice,” Jonathan mumbled.

Buffy glanced at Spike with a raised brow. “Business as usual?”

Spike gave her a dry look. “It’s like bloody  _Married with Children_.”

“Emphasis on the ‘children’,” Giles said wearily, rubbing a hand on his temple.

Drusilla turned from where she had been examining the darkened TV, Oz at her side, holding her hand loosely in his own. She examined Buffy with unexpected warmth. “Look, Doggie, it’s the faerie come again.”

“I see her, Dru,” Oz said easily. He smiled at Buffy. “Welcome back, Buffy.”

Buffy laughed slightly. “Hi, Oz. It’s been a long time.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “A couple days, right?”

Buffy grinned at him. “About that.”

Tara watched Buffy from where she stood next to Dawn’s chair. Her long blonde hair was pulled loosely back from her face, her face slightly puffy from months of intermittent crying. Her expression was determined, set. Familiar.  _Oh, Tara._  Without thinking, Buffy strode to her and swept the startled woman into a tight embrace. Tara stood stiffly for a second and then collapsed into her, settling her weight into Buffy’s arms.

“I know, I know, I know,” Buffy murmured into her hair, feeling her shirt grow damp beneath the witch’s silent tears.

“Does it ever get better?” Tara whispered against her collarbone, her hands tightly clutching Buffy’s t-shirt.

Buffy’s mouth twisted and she glanced back at Spike, who was watching her silently, lovingly. “The truth?”

“The truth, sweetie.”

Buffy sighed. “Better or worse doesn’t really apply. That would mean that there’s a space to improve. But, really, that space? It’s a loss. You just have to go into other rooms and find the things that make you happy there. And you’ll spend a lot of time in the first space, in the room that holds everything you want. But it never changes in there. It’s just… stuck.” Buffy lifted the witch’s face up to meet hers, gazing sternly into her eyes. “Don’t camp out in the first room, Tara. Don’t be like me. I’m a relic. Like one of Giles’s dusty statues.”

Tara smiled weakly at her. “You’re far from dusty, Buffy.”

Buffy shrugged. “I don’t have a place anymore.” She glanced around the room, at this world’s Scoobies, who watched her silently with something like love or awe or compassion. “This is world is a good one. But it’s not mine. It  _is_  yours. So don’t forget to live in it.”

Young!Buffy shifted inside their mind space, her thoughts echoing resolve.  _I guess we’d better make sure it doesn’t go anywhere then._

Buffy smiled warmly. “I guess we’d better.”

  

***

 

“… And so we’ve been stuck in this British museum for three weeks,” Anya said with a frustrated huff.

Giles threw the ex-demon an irritated look. “I quite resent that remark.”

Dawn giggled. “I don’t know, Anya, it looks more like a warehouse than a museum to me.”

Buffy surveyed the crew silently from where she was snuggled in Spike’s arms on the floor against the outside kitchen wall. “So it’s gone? The entire Magic Box is gone?”

Xander nodded. “Luckily, we got most of the stuff out before the, uh, pyrotechnics.”

Tara smiled gently. “And we put a lot of protections on Giles’s apartment, so it made sense for us all to stay.”

“Yeah, until we decide to kill certain people,” Dawn said, with a pointed glare in Andrew’s direction.

Andrew gave her a hurt look. “Hey! I already told you I didn’t eat the last Oreo.”

“Well, I don’t believe you.”

Xander sighed. “It was me, okay?”

“Aha!” Andrew raised his pointer finger victoriously. “So the true fiend comes to light!”

“Oh, knock it off, Andrew,” Anya said, rolling her eyes. “I saw you eat the last of the brownies on Friday.”

Jonathan blinked and rounded on his friend. “Really? And you didn’t share?”

Spike cleared his throat. “Much as I hate to break up this bloody stupid conversation, got bigger fish to fry, yeah?”

Giles nodded wearily. “Indeed.” He gave Buffy a wry glance. “It’s like herding cats.”

Buffy smiled. “I can tell.” She paused, glancing around at them with nostalgia filling her veins. “I miss this. Although… I never really had  _this_  at all.”

Dru considered her with an unblinking gaze as she nestled loosely into Oz’s embrace. The werewolf seemed unfazed by it, even when Dru began to gently stroke the top of his head. “Faerie needs a family, Doggie.”

“She has us, Dru,” Oz told her, his eyes glued on Buffy. “She has us.”

 _And you have me,_  young!Buffy told her.

Buffy felt her throat grow tight and she swallowed roughly, trying to keep the edges of grateful tears at bay. Spike’s grip around her waist tightened and Buffy glanced back at him affectionately.

“So,” she said after a moment, “what’s the plan?”

The Scoobies all looked at each other. Finally, Dawn spoke up. “Would you like the dangerous part or the crazy part first?”

 

***

 

“Why does this seem familiar,” young!Buffy murmured as she sat – crammed against Spike on one side and Dawn on the other – in the back of Oz’s van, on the way to Sunnydale High in late afternoon.

Oz glanced back from the driver’s seat with a grin. “I think that’s because we did this four years ago.”

“Oh, right, silly me,” young!Buffy said dryly.

“Let’s not blow up the school again, though,” Xander said firmly. “I spent a lot of hours putting up that drywall.”

“But then you could just get paid to build it again,” Anya suggested, an evaluating glint in her eye.

Xander sighed, leaning back against the van wall. “Don’t think it’s worth it, Ahn.”

“Dunno,” Spike said easily. “Might be more fun to blow up a Hell Bitch than a sodding snake.” He tilted his head. “Bit too easy last time, all said.”

Giles turned in the front passenger seat to give the vampire a disapproving look. “As I rather recall, the extent of your aid last time was inventing new insults to throw at the mayor.”

Spike grinned at him. “Yeah. Wasn’t it grand?”

Xander laughed. “What was the one about green penises?”

“Called him a green giant’s stiffy gone flat.”

“Oh, yeah. That was great, man.”

Young!Buffy rolled her eyes. “Men.”

Buffy laughed inside their head _. I take it that’s how you provoked the mayor into going into the school?_

“Bingo.” Young!Buffy paused. “You did it differently? What happened in your time?”

 _Um._  Buffy winced.  _I taunted him with the knife I used to stab his adopted daughter._

Young!Buffy blinked. “That’s really screwed up, Buffy.”

 _I know. She and I become close years later, though._  Buffy laughed lowly.  _Excepting Cordelia, she’s actually the last person I spoke to before coming here._

“That sounds bizarro.”

_Welcome to the Hellmouth?_

Young!Buffy snorted. “You’re telling me. You’re not the one who’s had an older, super damaged self visiting on an annual basis. You’re like the real life version of those ‘don’t text and drive’ ads, except you’re more ‘don’t die and fuck everything up.’”

 _That is a somewhat depressingly accurate summary of my current existence,_  Buffy said dryly.

Young!Buffy giggled. “I’m sorry. I was sort of kidding.” Her light tone lapsed into something grim and fierce. “I want you with me, you know. Until the end.”

 _Until the end,_  Buffy agreed.

Jonathan squinted at young!Buffy from the other side of the van. “It’s really hard to follow a conversation when you can only hear half of it.”

Spike snorted. “Eavesdrop on, you mean.”

Dru blinked at Jonathan from near the rear wheel well. “Half? Can you not hear the faerie chittering?”

 _Just you, Dru,_  Buffy said gently.

The vampiress regarded young!Buffy with surprise. “How dull their brains must be. All quiet and dim.”

Andrew frowned at her. “I’ll have you know my brain holds the full dialogue of over 48 episodes of  _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ , miss dark vampire.”

Spike snorted. “Think you just confirmed Dru’s statement there, wally.”

And so began a heated argument that somehow managed to run the gamut from  _Star Wars_  to actual wars to, oddly enough, a fertility statue that had become a rather facetious centerpiece in Giles’s apartment.

The scene lit something deep and aching in Buffy’s core, teetering on the edge of joy and regret like a sword edge. Instead of frightened Potentials and a gang of Scoobies that were barely on speaking terms, this world’s Scoobies and extensions were still chatting casually while stuffed in van with a pile of weaponry and relics, laughing as if it wasn’t nearly the end of the world. Again.

_You all are handling this incredibly well. I’m proud._

Young!Buffy shrugged, her mouth twisting. “Should’ve seen us a few months ago. It was all with the grim. The First really messed us up for a minute. But living together at Giles’s has helped a lot,” she smiled slightly, “even if it does make me want to stake someone. Or several someones.”

Bittersweet memory flooded Buffy, remembrances of a house full of young girls, taking over every available space with their slumber parties and teenage silliness.  _I understand. This year – in my time – was one of the few times I didn’t feel alone._  Dark memory clouded her for a moment.  _Well, for a while._

“What’s that feeling? What happened?”

_Several betrayals that no longer matter._

Young!Buffy mused over that. “I remember… when you told me to trust Spike. You said he was the only that stood by you.”

Spike glanced over at young!Buffy, brow raised. “Only one? Wankers.” He shrugged easily. “Would stand by you over the world, Buffy.”

Young!Buffy leaned against his shoulder, breathing in the smell of leather and cigarettes that was his permanent cologne. “Sure you couldn’t stand by me a few feet farther away once we’re in position?”

Spike gave her a hard look. “Not leaving you to take them on alone.”

Young!Buffy sighed. They’d had the same conversation about five times since the morning. “Can’t you talk some sense into him?” she asked her other self.

Buffy snorted. _Last time, my Spike_  did  _choose the world over me. He burned alive. I consider this progress._

“Did he do it because of his soul?”

_Maybe. I always made him feel lacking. The soul quadrupled the effect._

Spike shifted uncomfortably beside them, as he always did when catching word of his other self’s soul.

“She doesn’t wish that on you, you know,” young!Buffy told him gently.

Spike’s jaw clenched, his eyes flickering to her uncertainly. “Yeah? And how about you, luv?”

“Not me, either.” Young!Buffy eyed him sidelong. “I know that if I asked you to get it, you would.”

Spike looked severely offended at the claim, although his expression quickly faded into resignation. “Suppose I would, at that.” He gently brushed a lock of hair from her face. “Shame we can’t just spend the day in bed, eh, luv?”

Buffy felt her younger self sink down, instinctually knowing he was no longer talking to her, and Buffy rose, smiling wryly. “A shame. But I’ve been nothing more than a warrior for twenty years. It’s fitting.”

Spike chuckled. “Suppose so. Just…” he looked at her quietly for a long moment, his expression some mixture of tenderness and regret. “Just wish I could give you more, pet.”

“This is more than I ever really could have hoped for, you know.”

Spike tilted his head at her, blue eyes watching her steadily. Gently, he bent his head to hers and kissed her softly on the lips, almost chastely. He pulled back a moment later, resting his forehead against hers. “I love you, Buffy. Thank you. For everything.”

Buffy touched his cheek lovingly, reverently. “Don’t thank me yet. We have a long way to go today.”


	9. Day 7: See it to the End (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a weird story, all. So I think it’s safe to assume there’ll be a weird ending. Cheers!

The Scooby crew had managed to disentangle themselves from Oz’s van outside the high school and now stood next to the front doors, going over strategy one last time.

“You know,” Spike said with a pointed look at young!Buffy, “we could’ve prevented this whole bloody rigmarole if you’d just let me kill the Hell Bitch two years ago.”

Young!Buffy sighed. “I know.”

Buffy shrugged inside their mind.  _The First would’ve just found another pawn. Honestly, better the devil you know. Caleb was a bastard._

“Caleb?”

_Preacher from hell._

“Literally?”

_No. But in pretty much every other way. Ended up having to slice him in half with my scythe._

“Huh. That scythe sounds super with the awesome, by the way,” young!Buffy said thoughtfully. “When we’re done here, I’m going to see if I can find it.”

Xander blinked at them. “There’s an awesome scythe? Why didn’t we find this bit of magic  _before_  meeting the parent of all evil?”

“Drawing power from the scythe was kind of a big cause of all things wreckage in ghost!Buffy’s time,” young!Buffy told him patiently. “Better not chance it.”

Tara nodded, eyeing the pile of magical weapons and armaments they’d settled on the ground. “And something with that kind of magic is made to slay. It’s destructive. We want bindings and blessings only.” She glanced at young!Buffy apologetically. “Even with four of us and Dawnie as a power source, I don’t know if it’ll be enough.”

They all heard the unsaid end to her words.  _Without Willow._

“You’ll be perfect,” young!Buffy told her firmly, leaning down to grab a sword from the ground. She hefted it experimentally, testing the blade. “No spells on this, right, Giles?”

Her Watcher nodded firmly. “It’s just steel, my dear.”

Spike retrieved a nearly identical weapon and hefted it in a similar motion. “Hope this works, Watcher.”

Giles sighed deeply. “Honestly, Spike, I can’t even begin to say.”

Young!Buffy turned to her sister and grabbed her in a one-armed, bone-crushing embrace.

“Ow! Buffy!”

“Sorry.” Young!Buffy released her grip and looked into her sister’s eyes. Buffy felt her surprise at remembering how tall the teenager had gotten.

 _She gets even a little taller,_  Buffy murmured, making her younger self smile.

“Dawnie, listen to me,” young!Buffy said quietly. “If the worst happens… if the Hellmouth opens… you get out, okay? You get in Oz’s van with whoever will go, and you get as far away from Sunnydale as possible. Oz left the keys in the ignition.”

The werewolf glanced over, catching their conversation. “It’s an automatic transmission,” he added calmly. “The best tunes are already in the cassette player.”

Dawn looked between them defiantly. “I’m not going anywhere, Buffy.”

Spike put a hand on Dawn’s shoulder. “Bit, if that happens, it means Buffy and I are gone already, alright?”

Dawn bit her lip in an absurdly close imitation of her sister. “You’re not allowed to go anywhere. Either of you.”

“Can’t always help that, Niblet.”

Dawn glared at her sister. “There are two of you in there. So you better help it.”

_I’ll do my best, Dawnie._

Young!Buffy just kissed her sister’s forehead. “Promise me,” she said again.

Dawn's shoulders slumped. “I promise,” she whispered, looking angry at herself.

“Thank you,” young!Buffy said. She straightened with a sigh and Buffy felt her switch into Slaying mode, all tensed muscles and strange calm.

“Everyone ready?” she asked. At their nods, young!Buffy twirled her sword sharply, watching the steel cut through air with a slight whistle. “Alright then. Let’s do this, guys.”

 

***

 

As expected, the high school was chock-full of Bringers.

“Does Glory have a knack for attracting hideous minions, or what?” young!Buffy said as she ran a Bringer through, the sword slicing neatly through his chest.

“Only way she can feel like more than a washed-up whore,” Spike commented, grunting as he ducked a killing blow and whirled expertly, slicing off the demon’s head.

Giles took out another approaching Bringer with a crossbow, herding Andrew and Jonathan behind him, whose arms were full of spelled equipment. “Bloody annoying prats,” the Watcher added with a grimace, side-stepping an axe swing from another minion.

Finally, in their little section of hallway next to the entrance, they were down to one minion. Young!Buffy had no more than turned when Xander rushed at it, nearly hacking the Bringer to a pulp with his axe before Spike pulled him away. “That’s enough, Harris.”

Xander stood panting over the demon’s body. He kicked it then, tears streaming down his face. “Bastard. That’s for Willow.”

Tara appeared next to him, hand in hand with Dawn. “This is all for Willow,” she said softly, though her eyes were flinty. “All of it.”

Slowly, they fought their way to the principal’s office. When they were at last in sight, the others hung back while Spike and young!Buffy sprinted forward alone.

Young!Buffy glanced over at Spike’s hand, where the Gem of Amara lay glamoured. “We don’t know what will happen if you have the ring on, Spike.”

“So you’ve said about ten times, pet. We don’t know what’ll happen without it, either.”

“You’re still a reckless idiot.”

_I’m not sure he knows how to be anything else._

Spike shrugged, grinning at her as he evaded an attacking Bringer’s blow. “That’s why you love me.”

“Pretty sure I love you in spite of that,” young!Buffy grunted, as a Bringer swung at her head. She pivoted sharply and plunged her sword into its neck. It dropped  – the last one of its crew, for the moment.

“Surprised Effie’s not making a showing,” Spike said warily as they examined the bodies.

“It doesn’t think we can really do anything,” Buffy replied dryly, surging forward. “Last time, it had an army of Slayers and Willow to contend with.”

Spike gave her a knowing look. “Hasn’t been paying attention to what you’ve changed then, has it?”

Buffy smiled grimly in her borrowed body. “Not closely enough. It thinks we’re weak in this rendition. The truth is, you all are stronger this way, together.” Buffy glanced back to where the four magic casters – Tara, Giles, Andrew, and Jonathan – were getting set in a tight circle. Anya, Xander, Oz, and Dru stood around them, hefting various weapons in defense. The pile of blessed materials was clumped around Dawn in the center of the set-up, dwarfing the smallest Summers in bits of metal and stone.

 _She’ll be fine_ , young!Buffy told her solidly.  _I made her promise._

Buffy smiled wryly. “She has a habit of not listening.”

 _Well, it’s a different Dawn_. There was a pause.  _I hope._

Buffy and Spike turned toward the principal’s suite, where once Buffy had tried to counsel the students of Sunnyhell High. Where once she’d failed a girl named Cassie and ended up holding her broken body. Where once she’d met Amanda, one of the many Potentials she’d brought to ruin. Where once Robin Wood had been employed, who had betrayed her mission and almost made her lose her lover. Earlier than she actually did, that was. The memories swept through Buffy in a damning haze, swamping her, and young!Buffy tugged at their mind space, yanking back control.

“It’s not here,” she told her older self. “Wherever those ghosts are. They’re not here.”

_They’re in me. Always._

“Then be in me.”

Buffy paused.  _Like before, with Spike? Do you think we can manage it again?_

“I know we can.” Young!Buffy took a deep breath. “I told you I need you with me for this.”

_What should we think of?_

Young!Buffy smiled coyly and turned to a waiting Spike, grabbing the startled vampire and tugging him into a secluded corner. “What do you think?” To Spike, she just said, “Fuck me. Quickly.”

Spike chuckled and dropped his sword, smirking as she followed suit. “Anytime, luv.” He whirled them around so that young!Buffy’s back was against the wall and ground his erection into her. Both Buffys moaned.

“Are you never not hot for me?”

“Never, pet. Never.”

He tugged down her pants swiftly in time with his own and pulled her up to his waist, pausing only to spit on his cock before sinking into her.

“Oh, yes. Spike. Yes, please,” Buffy murmured, not knowing if it was really her saying it or her younger self. Neither of them really cared.

He fucked them roughly against the wall. They were, Buffy realized almost after the fact, actually against a wall of lockers. The combination locks rattled with each thrust, the weirdest melody against the rhythmic slapping of skin. But it didn’t really matter. They could have been in the middle of the freaking Sahara, for all Buffy cared. Spike was here, plunging into her, murmuring her name between harsh grunts, clutching her and pulling her closer, laving her mouth with his own. His hands found her clit and rubbed it almost lazily, an excruciating counterpoint to his almost savage thrusts. It was the only way to show his tenderness in this moment, when none of them could afford to be soft.

The Buffys' orgasm rose in them like some unexpected beast, hot and pulsing and demanding. When the Buffys strangled Spike’s cock, he just hissed violently and shoved them harder against the lockers, impaling them against the cold metal until his own release took him, leaving him panting and shuddering against their collarbone. Finally, he released them, his blue eyes dark with lust and love. He tugged up his pants and then helped them with theirs.

“Best way to start the end of the world, yeah?” he growled.

“The best,” both Buffys agreed. They picked up their fallen sword. “Let’s go.”

It was almost weird to see the potential end of the world encased in the principal’s suite of Sunnydale High. If the Turok-Han cavern had been a testament to the horrid reality of the supernatural writhing just below the surface, this was a testament that it lived above it too, buried right amongst everything that should have been mundane. And the hell god inside wasn’t any less hell god-y because of it.

Glory turned as they slammed open the suite door, a circle of chanting Bringers behind her in the principal’s office. The air that met them was hazy and hot, slightly electric. It made young!Buffy’s skin feel unsettled, as if it was just a moment from trying to fly away.

“Ugh. You guys again?” The blonde god flipped her curled hair in annoyance. “You never give up, do you?”

“Sorry,” the Buffys said, very unapologetically. “It’s kind of our job.”

“What is? To be a giant pain in my ass?” Glory glanced at their weapons, red lips curling into a disbelieving smile. “Okay, I know the vampire is immortal and all, but you, Slayer? This is more pathetic than the technology-challenged Knights of Borington. I’m about to blow this popsicle stand and you’re threatening me with steel swords?” She sighed. “I’m kind of insulted, you know?”

Angelus appeared next to her, rippling in a dark blazer, eyes flat and cold. “Yeah, Buff. Real pathetic.”

The Buffys eyed him coolly. “Angelus? Really, Effie? That’s the best you’ve got?”

Angelus just looked at her coldly and then blurred, shifting immediately into… her. “Not even close,” came a soft, Buffy-ish purr, from very familiar, pouting lips.

Spike balked. “What the hell?”

The Buffys stood firm, buoyed by the older Buffy’s memory. “Oh, hey! It’s a threesome, Effie. Didn’t realize you were into that kind of thing.”

Spike glared at the First, glancing over at Buffy uncertainly. “But you didn’t die, luv.”

“One of us did,” the Buffys replied, with a shrug. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s just parlor tricks.”

Glory laughed. “Yeah, honey. The trick is that you stand here chatting with my ghostly friend until my guys finish doing their thing.”

The Buffys raised a brow. “What makes you think we want you to stop?”

That seemed to throw both the First and Glory for a loop. First!Buffy’s eyes narrowed. “The witch.”

“And wizards,” the Buffys added. “Let’s not be exclusionary here.”

Glory glanced back at the chanting Bringers, at the waves of heat that were pouring through the office, almost visibly red. Every time Buffy blinked, something seemed to waver, as if every molecule was just two seconds from flying apart.

“Not sure what you’re trying, hon,” the god said with amusement, “but it doesn’t seem to be working.”

As her words left her, a strange, jolting wave swept through the room, turning all the heat to cold, and Glory stumbled against a desk. “What in the–” Her eyes widened as her body began to tremble. “ _No._  You–“ And then, writhing terribly, she twisted into Ben.

“Here comes the bloody dangerous part,” Spike muttered.

The Buffys nodded, bracing themselves against the impact. The Scoobies had known that – especially without Willow – they weren’t likely strong enough to overcome the Bringers’ spell casting. So they decided not to try. Instead, they decided to modify the spell with a reversal addendum (a surprisingly brilliant idea from Jonathan) that would add to the Bringers’ magic and sort of bend it backwards. The spell that originally wanted to rip and break and tear? It would now bind and close and seal. Theoretically.

But to everything an effect, for good or ill. Just as the spell itself was radiating outward in undulating waves, so was the addendum, up until the moment it coalesced into its final casting state. Until then, they had ripples to contend with, and none of them really knew what the reversal would mean for those standing in them. Magical being and items, they guessed, would be the most effected. Non-magical items less so.

The best estimated end result? Glory would reverse into Ben and become a non-problem. The worst? They had no idea what would happen to Spike or Buffy.

Even as the first shockwave slammed into them, the Buffys were still at a loss. And then everything turned all at once strangely numb and vividly coursing. Everything began to thrum with the need to hunt. To be empty. To die.

The intensity sent young!Buffy’s mind reeling, and she swept up her older self in the deluge, their sword dropping from a numbed hand.

In front of them, the First was stumbling equally unsteadily.  _Why is something incorporeal stumbling?_ the Buffys thought in tandem, amidst all the chaos. They barely heard the First’s command, and didn’t notice the Bringer spinning up from the spell circle as they bent to pick up their fallen sword, wicked knife flashing.

“ _Buffy! No!_ ” came Spike’s tortured voice, and it was sweet relief to their ears. He wasn’t dust, apparently. At least, not yet.

And then pain exploded in their back, bright and damning and overwhelming, and they crashed to the ground. It didn’t take either of them more than a second to know it was a killing blow.

Their fingers clenched against the linoleum, young!Buffy’s thoughts rose consumingly fierce against the agony, incredibly bitter against her failure.  _I’m sorry_ , she whispered to herself, even as they heard Spike rage against the Bringer with some animalistic, howling roar. The demon dropped next to her a moment later, dead.

 _Like us soon, huh?_  Young!Buffy murmured through the pain.

Buffy tried to settle her young self, rising to full control with unexpected ease, attempting to block out the stabbing agony for them both. After so many not-deaths, pain was just a familiar inconvenience. In fact, everything felt familiar, eerily so. It felt like… “Buffy, I think…”

The First strode toward her then, apparently recovered, wearing an imitation of the older Buffy’s high-heeled boots. “I guess you won’t quite make it long enough to see hell on earth, after all,” she said perkily, leaning down with a faux-pout. “It was a nice try, but my Harbingers are taking apart your pathetic spell circle even as I speak.”

Buffy lifted her head, the motion feeling smooth and familiar. Unborrowed. Helplessly, she began to laugh (even though it make her chest quake in agony), and pulled herself stiffly to her feet. Grimacing, she looked over at a shocked and still very alive Spike. He looked just the same, although the ring on his finger was now visible, almost distractingly so. She had to almost continually tell her eyes to look away. Avoiding the mesmerizing gem, Buffy motioned to the knife between her shoulder blades. “Pull this out for me, will you, lover?”

Spike just gaped at her, hand half-outstretched in disbelief. “Buffy?”

“Yep. It’s me.” Buffy paused, with a tight, grim smile. “Actually me, in fact.”

Young!Buffy’s thoughts were shuddering.  _I don’t understand. What happened to us?_

Buffy just smiled wryly. “We’re in my body now.”

Young!Buffy’s thoughts were horrified.  _This is what your body feels like?_

“Surprise.” Buffy paused. “Think about Spike. It’ll help. I know how to handle this body.” Turning to the vampire in question, she motioned again to her back. “Do you mind?”

Spike shook himself, eyes gone wide with understanding. He stepped forward and pulled out the blade in a smooth motion that left her gasping.

“Oh, fuck. That still hurts.”

Ben eyed them in shock from the desk where he was slumped. “What did you do?”

Buffy shrugged, gathering her stunned younger self into a protective mental embrace.  _Hang in there._  “It’s reversal at its finest. Neat, huh?” She leaned down to retrieve the sword, wincing as her torn back pulled. With a smooth motion, she lunged forward and let the steel run through Ben’s chest to impale itself solidly in the desk beneath him, a motion that eerily mirrored what Buffy had once done to Angel. Except this time she didn’t regret it. Not even a little bit. The man gaped at them soundlessly.

“Goodbye, Ben,” Buffy said.

Blood welled at the edges of Ben’s mouth and he gurgled ineloquently at them before his head dropped backward, dead before it hit the desk.

First!Buffy watched the scene with something bordering on shock, a look that settled finally into smug satisfaction. “It doesn’t really matter if she’s dead or not, you know.”

Buffy shrugged and wrenched her sword free, Ben’s blood dripping from the blade and dotting the linoleum like a slow rain.

“No,” Buffy agreed, “it doesn’t. But it matters if you are.” And then she swung directly at First!Buffy’s throat, rending her neck neatly from her body. A very corporeal body dropped to the ground, a gross imitation of Buffy’s head lolling to the side, free at last.

“Huh,” Buffy said speculatively. “I guess decapitation really would’ve worked, after all."

It was then that the remaining Bringers’ magic turned sharp and frigid and drowning. Buffy felt her immortal body shudder as the reversal began to flow away from them, drawn toward the point of coalescence in the principal’s office.

“The spell’s still working,” Buffy gasped, stumbling.

Young!Buffy surged forward again, steadying them as they rested in some limbo of half-ripples.

Spike winced at the radiating magic, tugging her close to him. “Seems so.” He glanced over at the Bringers. They seemed almost frozen in place, unable to move even a muscle as chanting poured from them unceasingly. Everything in the room grew thick like some horrid soup, swirling. “Let’s get out of here, pet.”

They ran.

As they vaulted down the hallway, Buffy realized she had no idea whose body they were in any longer.

“I don’t know either,” young!Buffy said softly.

But there really wasn’t a moment to contemplate things any further.

They found the rest of the crew just down the hall, the four spellcasters drawn into a raggedly tight circle, chanting into a crescendo. Anya was laid out on the ground nearby, a nasty cut across her forehead. Dru was whimpering next to her, blood pouring from her shoulder. Xander was cradling an unconscious Dawn. Oz was grappling with the last standing Bringer. His face twisted with a snarl, half wolf, and he ripped out the Bringer’s heart with a suddenly clawed hand. The Bringer’s lifeless body was just dropping to the ground when Spike and Buffy reached them.

With a last choral, shouted cry, the spell ended and everything in the high school trembled, as if in the middle of a small earthquake. And then it was quiet. Spike caught Tara as she tumbled to the ground, and Buffy held up her Watcher and Andrew while Xander made a one-armed grab for Jonathan.

Oz blinked at them in the odd, sudden hush. “Huh,” he said calmly. “Strange day.”

The Buffys shuffled around in their new mind space uncertainly, huffing against Giles’s dead weight. “You have no idea.”

  

***

 

“Well, the school didn’t blow up,” Xander said with exhausted cheer as they all sat, shell-shocked, in Giles’s apartment.

“No, it didn’t,” Giles agreed wearily from the desk chair. He raised a brow. “We may have, in fact, closed the Hellmouth for… well, perhaps, a long time.”

The three other magic users were slumped on the couch, with Dawn sluggishly drinking orange juice at their feet. Anya was conscious again, although she was still a bit too pale. Drusilla was in somewhat worse shape, but it wasn’t anything that blood wouldn’t heal with time. After a moment’s hesitation, the Buffys opened a vein in the kitchen and poured a cup for the vampiress.

Oz watched them with amazement. “You’re sure?”

The Buffys looked at him wryly. “Without Drusilla, our life would have sucked a lot more. Think of it as a thank-you gift, Oz.”

He took the mug of blood very solemnly. “Thank you, Buffy.”

They just nodded at him, wrapping their wrist in a small bandage as they re-entered the living room, where Giles was now staring at a very annoyed Spike.

“ _What_ , Watcher!” the vampire finally barked.

Giles blinked, shaking himself out of his thoughts. “My apologies, I’m simply… trying to fathom what happened to you with the ripples. Or rather, why something _didn’t_  happen.”

Spike shrugged. “Dunno. Saw the glamour on the Gem reverse, but when the bloody magic hit, just felt like it was constantly trying to tear me to pieces and couldn’t quite.” He winced. “Hurt like a bitch.”

Tara sat up slowly, her face bright with thought. “It must be the ring,” she mused. She glanced at Giles with a small, wondering frown. “Giles, w-what if the Gem operates on permanency?”

Giles’s eyes widened. “Good lord.”

The others all stared at him.

“Sharing at anytime would be good,” Xander told him impatiently.

Jonathan groaned agreement, not opening his eyes. “Yeah, I am way too hurting to think.”

Giles tugged off his glasses with a sigh, considering the lenses evenly. “What Tara is suggesting,” he said slowly, wearily, “is that the ring doesn’t work on the basis of invulnerability, as we’ve always thought.”

Spike raised a brow. “What does it do then?”

“It is, potentially, an artifact that works on the idea of immutability. Whatever the wearer’s initial state upon donning the ring, it might seek to maintain for itself and its wearer. Even against magical force.”

Spike blinked down at his ringed hand, regarding it appreciatively. “Well, bloody hell. That’s handy.”

The Buffys glared at him from the kitchen, young!Buffy’s annoyance shining through. “Except we didn’t know that, you idiot. You could have died.”

Spike regarded her with a touch of amusement. “Pretty sure you were the one almost down and out, pet.”

Young!Buffy sighed ruefully. “Yeah. I guess so.”

Buffy looked worriedly at the thoughtful Watcher. “But what about us, Giles? I’m – ghostly me – isn’t supposed to stick around. With our body as it is – and we’re not really sure which pieces are whose – I don’t think I’m going anywhere. But… Cordelia said me staying here could wreck this whole thing.”

Giles frowned at her consideringly. “Because you’re a rupture in the time stream, right, my dear?”

“That’s what she said.”

The Watcher made a small sound of satisfaction, smiling at her. “But you aren’t anymore, Buffy. Your consciousness is now grounded to this time by virtue of your, ah, newly shared body.”

The Buffys considered that quietly.

 _It’s hard for me to tell us apart anymore_ , young!Buffy thought slowly.

Buffy nodded. “I know.” And it was true. The window pane that had always existed between them, permanently embedded even when it was flung open, now to seemed to have disappeared entirely. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

Young!Buffy laughed through their body. “If not for you, I’d probably be dead right now. Actually, dead about three times over, I think.” She paused. “Do you think we’re immortal?”

_I have no idea._

“Hmmm.” Their body shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.” They glanced over at Spike with a warm smile. “I guess you’re stuck with the both of us.”

Spike smirked in their direction. “The more Buffys the merrier, pet.”

Giles steepled his fingers thoughtfully. “It may be that you will find yourselves rather indistinguishable, after a time.”

The Buffys smiled at that.

 _Until the end?_  Young!Buffy asked.

_Until the end._


End file.
